Harlan remembered something that he needed to do.
“Harlan, to what do I owe the pleasure? And, should this be private?”
“Yes, it should be.”
Harlan could hear the sounds of her moving to another room.
“I just wanted to ask, have you visited a doctor? Had any morning sickness?”
“How did you know? I haven’t even told Redmond yet.”
“I knew before I left for the academy. I saw your soul putting off little wisps, and having seen the same thing with a worker under me, I could tell immediately. I only didn’t mention it because I know miscarriages where the mother never even knows, are not uncommon. I just… I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
“My doctor said that I am progressing well and that my age should have no side effects on the child.
I’m happy to have somebody else who knows. I’ve not missed all of the annoying parts, but I feel 20 years younger to be like this.”
“I’m glad that you are handling everything well. I know it is early, but do you have any ideas of names? Would you like a boy or a girl?”
Harlan really wasn’t that interested in these things, the baby would be born eventually, and at that time, he would know all of this. But he could tell that she was excited and he wanted her to feel free to unleash that.
It was the weekend, so Harlan didn’t leave his room, his work came to him.
He had become quite fond of card games, and was using them in more and more tests.
Currently, they played was based on blackjack, but, she could discard cards instead of drawing them if she wanted and Harlan was not playing to reach 21.
The goal was rather basic, based on divinations, one simply had to make educated guesses to beat him.
What he wasn’t telling them was that he was also testing out his own anti-divinations.
“Bust.”
“How? I swore that the next card was a 7 of hearts.”
“Another game? Double or nothing?”
“We aren’t betting, what would that even entail?”
“I could give you clear advice if you win. If I win, then you keep coming to me for help, because I believe you are gaining more from these games than you are with just being told how to use magic.”
The girl from Reino, Cila, scoffed.
“If this was a better method, it would be used in classes. I don’t see why they are even sending me to you.”
“I said this was a better method for you, not for everyone. Magic is about affecting the reality in front of you, shaping it to your desire, and not everyone reaches that on their own, most don’t even view it like that.
So, do you want to be a true mage, or just another fool who throws out the same fireball as a thousand other fools.”
“The teaching of the academy has made some of the greatest minds within the magical community.”
“And yet they are worse for me personally, and I have completed weeks of classes ahead of schedule, giving me more free time to help people like you. The greatest methods they can devise likely work for 99% of all students, I hope that I am helping that last percent.”
“How conceited. Fine, double or nothing.”
Harlan cheated, he had become very good at it. He didn’t even need to do it, but he wanted her to doubt her own abilities so he could make her understand that he was right.
“This doesn’t make sense. I know I had the right card.”
“Again.”
“I should be going.”
“It’s fine if you can’t win. We can just pick this up later.”
“Why are you like this?”
“Because, as I learn magic, I see people who follow recipes to the letter as boring. Do you have a hobby?”
“I like reading.”
“Can you picture every scene, every character, in your mind? Or do you just read without thinking about it?”
“I imagine what these things look like, I believe I am able to understand and remember what I read.”
“Then why are you not able to imagine which card you want? Why can’t you find it? Divination is the magic that I teach most people, and I believe that is because it is almost all in the mind. Do you desire the card? Or are you just looking for it because you are asked to find it?”
The girl thought over his words.
“I see then, you are antagonizing me so that I ask you the questions that you want to answer. Can’t you just be more straightforward?”
“You asking the question means you are in the right mindset to learn what I am showing you. Anyone can listen to a lecture, but when that is done, and the professor asks if you have questions, how many raise their hands?”
“Alright, one more game.”
Harlan did not cheat, because this time, he knew that she would do what he wanted.
She hit 21.
“I believe you must give me two answers. It was double or nothing, correct?”
“Of course.”
“How did you cheat before?”
“I had this deck custom made. Each card is blank, but they are coated with ground mana crystals that I use to paint them differently as I play them.”
“That is… wicked.”
“It is effective.”
Harlan cycled through different faces for the cards as he held them in a fan grip.
“You learned your lesson. And, along with the cards being shapeshifting, I have been applying anti-divination spells as I shuffled the deck; at random these cards will show up as the wrong number. Now, if you had paid attention, or perhaps you didn’t know, but in a 52 card deck, there are 4 of each card. Anytime you could find more or less than that, you could’ve called me out on my trick. What about your second question?”
She thought for a long while, not thinking about her other appointment.
“Do you enjoy this? Magic? Is that your hobby?”
“I do, I love this, from teaching you, to learning new things, to testing them. I love magic, in every aspect.
I can grow a seed into a plant in minutes, and I can turn an orc into a pile of flesh. It is objective, there is no politics of magic, when I shoot a fireball, I am shooting a fireball. It has rules, yet they can be bent and broken as I learn them. There is a certain comfort in this, it doesn’t betray me, it warms my home at night, it keeps my floors clean, and it protects everyone and everything that I love. In a world without magic, I would be a farmer's son, or a war chief's son. And that is it, but here, now, I can kill a beast a dozen times my size with just the right spells, I can move and hit with the force to turn a man into a pile of gore. And, I can cure a sprained ankle when my niece and nephew play outside. There is nothing more beautiful to me than this power, which can make men unequal, so that those with the most power can protect those with the least.”
“And it lets tyrants subjugate their people far more easily.”
“That is true, but if the king has a million men, and none of them with magic, I would likely win that fight. It would take months, but I could hide myself completely, I could manufacture poisons for water supplies that kill only humans, I could siege castles by myself. In the end, magic lets power be power, for better or worse.
Yet still, a man with enough gold, and the right friends, may make those with more power than him suffer.”
“So, that is how you view magic. As a friend? Something that lets you do whatever you want?”
“Every choice we make is based on what we can do, those in the slums could eat fine meals, but only through theft or charity. So, how much choice do they have? If I became a man able to oppose a nation by myself, and then choose to live peacefully, I have the most choices of any man in the world, nothing would be outside of my reach.”
She made a worried look.
“That is the place of gods. Man must have their limits.”
“You have no idea what your limits are, so I helped you push them. I only cheated on those last few rounds, the ones before that, you simply lost because of bad luck, or a lack of thought in your moves. Your only goal was to hit 21, you weren’t going against me. You could’ve won every single game, if you waited.
So, why did you choose to lose?”
She cocked her head to the side, not quite grasping how differently both of them viewed the world.
“I should be going. Thank you for your lesson today. I will also be thinking about your answer to my question.”
“Of course, thank you for letting me teach you.”
It was off putting how serene he looked, how gently he spoke.
If she was asked, she could not believe he held an ounce of malice in his heart even as he spoke of slaughtering men, of how power was his end goal so he could do what he wanted.
It put her on edge how much he wasn’t putting her on edge.
“You’ve really gotten into this, but…”
“But what?”
“You are being strange. Is this getting to your head?”
“If she was Cato, I’d never get the chance to actually finish what I was saying, or explain it so peacefully. She asked that question with genuine intent, not to start an argument or debate.
She wanted to understand how I viewed magic, because it interested her.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“I just want to make sure that you aren’t getting soft. She only decided not to either ignore or outwardly hate you because she needed something. If you hadn’t helped her, or you couldn’t, would she have been so quick to wish for understanding?”
“Yes, and I love that.”
“Care to explain? Your mind is… jumbled, I can’t read it very well at all right now.”
“I converted her from hate to at least trying to understand, with just a handful of lessons, all I needed was time and a room where she couldn’t imagine me as her enemy.”
“Harlan, I can’t look at everything, but you are going to some very unsavory places. Why don’t you cool off for a bit.”
“I have Charlotte scheduled next. I should make sure things are ready.”
“These are just fleeting, right? You don’t really want to mass empathize people?”
“If I ever did something like that, find a way to kill me, if not, find a way to make me kill myself, because I will have crossed a line into insanity even if my intentions are pure and my efforts bring peace. Could you promise me that?”
“Yes, I promise. But, I think you need to see your friends, you are becoming detached, you need to remember, always, that your life is worth protecting, don’t tell me to take it so easily.”
“I’m sorry. I just drifted off into something strange again.”
He clapped his hands and she saw his mind shift and bend back into the Harlan that she knew.
The stream of consciousness was odd, but only in the way that Harlan was odd, she could read it clearly for the most part.
Harlan moved around the table in his room, using a little bit of light magic to make the shafts of light brighter. On the table he placed wooden flowers, and with a little bit of illusions, they looked real, with a little bit of rose oil, they smelled real.
He wanted things to look like a painting.
When Charlotte arrived she looked over the odd scene.
“What is this?”
“Please, sit.”
His armor slithered off of him and reformed, pulling out the chair for her and pouring two cups of tea.
Harlan raised his index finger, he only wanted 1 sugar cube.
Charlotte saw this and raised 4 fingers.
The atmosphere was tense.
“Do you want to learn? Or would you like to just talk.”
“I need to learn.”
“Don’t bury yourself in work, it won’t dull the pain as much as you want it to, but it will drive the demons into a different part of your mind for a little while at least. For today’s lesson, I’ve had my armor place pieces of jewelry on my desk, without looking behind you, draw them using the paper and pencils provided to you.”
After 15 minutes, she could only get the shape and some of the details, but color still eluded her.
“Why can’t we go back to the cards?”
“You already won at that, and I didn’t use those cards to directly make you better at divination, I used them to make you question me and build confidence. This test is much simpler and a test of your ability to divine objects as more than just masses of light or however it is that you view them. I can tell that you have improved just by looking at your first piece compared to the last. But, do you realize that you’ve improved?”
She flipped through the paper and while it was subtle, her work was better each time that she tried it even if she hadn’t noticed.
“Huh.”
“I think you are easily discouraged when you can’t see your progress in a clear manner, but divination is a more subtle magic that doesn’t give the same feedback as shooting a fireball and noticing that the scorch marks reach another half an inch farther. Have you kept up with your painting?”
“I haven’t really felt like painting since…”
“I don’t know what he was to you, but it is going to hurt for a long time, of that I am sure. Find what makes you feel better, so long as it isn’t destroying you, and do that. Have you spoken with Mary, The counselor?”
“I think I might pick up my brush again. But for now, why don’t I draw more.”
“Of course.”
Her mood brightened the more they went on, the task required a certain amount of focus, enough that it kept her mind off of the death of her friend for just a bit.
“This counselor, Mary, do you really think she can help me?”
“You can’t know how you really feel until you say it outloud, and I know saying the things that hurt you outloud is hard. She is a good person, she isn’t going to judge you or make you feel worse about how you feel.”
“What do you talk about with her?”
“Can I trust you, that you aren’t going to tell anyone else?”
She shuffled around in her seat, wanting the answer, but not wanting the responsibility of what he would say.
“Yes.”
“Every day I wake up, I wait for the news that someone I love is dead, that I failed to protect them. I am also scared of what I am going to become as soon as that happens.
I’ve done a lot of things with the justification of protecting them, and at the same time, I have things that I could make, but my morals mean that I can’t bring myself to make them. I bear the burden of the lives that I take, and the ones that I could take, and the ones that I want to take. I want to kill people who’ve wronged me in any number of ways, and I need to fight that urge. But, Mary helps me to understand how I can avoid my darker side, not by hiding those parts of myself, but by understanding the things that make me feel this way. I don’t believe I will ever be better, or stop worrying, but she makes it easier. Sorry, I started rambling.”
“No, you always seem so… powerful, if she can make you look so soft, maybe I should see her.”
Harlan had to see Shane for their combat training, he had been improving quite a bit recently.
Yet he was late, just a minute, but Harlan had a bad feeling which he followed.
It didn’t take him long to see what the issue was.
3 boys, though not the same ones as before, were blocking his movement.
If he had to guess, they were older siblings of the ones from before.
“Is there a problem here?”
“Oh nothing to worry about. But, your duel request cannot be accepted by my younger brother, so, why not fight me instead. If you win, we will leave the little traitor alone.”
“I think I recall being very kind before, and also giving a warning that I would not do that a second time.”
Harlan suited up.
“Get the fuck away from him, or I am going to start taking you apart.”
The one who clearly led them was shocked, not only by the lack of decorum, but by the confidence in which Harlan spoke.
“How dare you. I’ll have you know that I am the son of Duke-”
Harlan moved forward and grabbed the boy’s arm, whipping him at the nearby wall and fracturing his spine.
While yes, he could’ve done it wrong and accidentally killed him, Harlan felt very confident in the durability of someone who has been a mage for likely half of their life and of his own ability to know his strength.
“Both of you, call healers, he is paralyzed from the neck down. If I have to do this again, I am going to kill all of you. I’m done with implied threats and civility. I am not going to let another one of my students suffer because of royalist or noble faction bullshit. Shane, we are late for your lessons.”
Harlan didn’t make it back to the sparing area before he was apprehended by guards and taken for questioning.
After all of the others were done, and thoroughly worried over his clear of lack of remorse for crippling the boy, Hirum arrived.
“Why should I not throw you out of the academy right now?”
“I fucking dare you.”
“What?”
“Oh, wait, actually, it would make sense that you act now, since someone has actually been hurt.
I wonder, when I dragged Shane in for healing because he was covered in black and blue marks, did you threaten to throw the other boys out? Or was their gold worth more than the life of that boy? Want to throw some more empty words at me? How I need to just work towards peace? These people don’t know peace, they are coddled by fucking fools like you until they are emboldened enough to act.”
Hirum slapped Harlan with enough force to dislocate his jaw.
He calmly sat back up and healed himself.
“Adina can hit harder than you.”
“Do you think this is all some grand joke?”
“From deep down, I hate every fiber of your being. You rose to the height of authority among mages and you let children rule your palace of learning. Marigold would weep at the state of her works being corrupted by men like you. How many have died from the people who come here for the sake of cultivating power and are never taught an ounce of morals? Do you at least feel the weight of your failures?”
“I control this place, not them. You have not even a single iota of what it takes to run this place, to avoid it turning into ruins in a plain without the gold that you ridicule. We all make compromises, I see that I have been far too lax with you.”
“Boys years older than my student-”
“You do not have students, you have people that we send to you in the hopes that some issue of theirs with magic is corrected. By your record it has worked, but you are nothing but a student alongside them.”
“Boys older than my student would’ve brazenly beaten him, as their siblings had done before. You didn’t tell me, were they threatened with expulsion?”
“You may return to the academy during the next year, provided you have learned to behave yourself.”
Hirum had his hand on the doorknob when a new voice hit his ears, soft and youthful yet with a certain quality that demanded respect.
“No, I believe that his question has merit.”
She had not been there moments ago.
“Who-”
He saw the robes, worn by the Golden woman, the ring on her finger, and the pieces fell into place.
“I am sorry to have not realized sooner.”
He knelt, his gaze entirely on the floor.
“Child. I am not someone worthy of such a reaction.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Please, answer the question.”
His mind was racing a mile a minute and it took him a second to remember what had been asked.
He looked like a child being scolded by his mother for tracking mud inside.
“I’m sorry, but it was just a fight between children. I didn’t think that-”
Her gaze turned cold.
“And what has the Little Shadow done? It was simply a fight between children, was it not? No one died after all, and isn’t that what you worry about?”
The sheer presence she carried would’ve made lesser men lose consciousness, Hirum still couldn’t get his legs to move, so he knelt despite her words.
“Ah, um, yes, you are right. Harlan, you may return to your room now. No further punishment needed.”
She kneeled down and looked him in his eyes.
“Hirum, dear Hirum, please, do not disappoint me like this again. Guide these children in a manner that befits me and glorifies what I love.This place is to be a neutral zone, where we can all learn and teach without the politics of the outside poisoning it. If the old treaties still stand, then Yggdra’s children should provide you with as much as you need to keep my treasure safe.”
“We have expanded quite a lot to ensure a higher quality of learning and…”
He looked downtrodden.
“Please, continue.”
“I will look over the budgets, and put more golems in the halls to ensure the children are safe. Though there will be complaints, perhaps even parents pulling their children.”
“This was never meant to be a factory, churning out soldiers in an endless war. If they care more about their children seeing creations that they think are evil than about learning magic, they are fools who do not have the right to this place. Do you know why I did not raze Reino to the ground, or let it be devoured by beasts?”
Harlan leaned forward, he was actually very interested in this story.
“You also need to learn this lesson, Little Shadow. I gave them magic because they are misguided, and as they have already shown now, they cannot survive on belief alone. As the world passes them by, they will need to make a choice, stay in the past, follow their Fae gods, or die. The current Yggdra, a shockingly peaceful man, understands this, just as his ancestor did. It is why he did not get involved in the war so long as it stayed at the border. It is why the gods and their champions do not get involved in these wars.
People are foolish and arrogant, sometimes killing them only leads to more martyrs.
Can you imagine the last grand saint even so much as sharing a single word that wasn’t filled with disgust and vitriol with Harlan? That is part of why I killed him, so they would be forced to usher in a time of peace.”
Harlan rubbed his chin, thinking over the lesson before him.
“So I should stay out of it, only removing the worst parts once they are revealed, cutting off the head of the snake.”
“To do anything else would be cutting the head off of a Hydra. What a good little student you have been.”
She ruffled his hair.
“So please, do not take it out on the children. You’ve made peace with the son of an enemy already, that is a very good sign. It has been good to meet you, Hirum. I believe that you can do great things if you just stop thinking like a merchant or a politician and instead think like a shepherd. Bring them to green fields, don’t let the wolves wearing wool lead them from the flock.”
“I thank you for your kind words. I hope to live up to your expectations.”
She vanished much like Xol would do, not single displacement could be seen, she was just gone.
Hirum had to remain on his knee, having lost the strength to stand from the anxiety of meeting her.
He read once when Marigold came out of hiding to remove a headmaster that disappointed her.
The place where she killed him was now a lake over 1000 feet in radius and cleanly cut the mountains around it.
“Maybe I judged you too harshly. If she thinks that you can change, I should also give you that chance.
So, I’ll forgive you.”
He barely registered what Harlan said as he waved him away.