Harlan spent a week already working at a tavern, the owner seemed like a reasonable man who had been faithful to his wife for years, opening a tavern in his old age called The Shaky Leg.
He had been a dancer of some renown in his youth, before being injured due to his old age giving brittle bones and retiring.
Yet another patron was not a decent man, Harlan had been ‘knocked out’ three times already, but he always got the patron to leave with a little bit of empathy if need be. Nobody had enough of a mind to resist him, thus force was not needed.
The girl’s name was Lilly, like the princess, but with an extra L. She had blonde hair and green eyes, much like him. More than a few people who had seen them assumed him to be her younger brother.
“You need to learn to stay out of things like this. I can handle myself.”
She was currently pressing a rag to his nose and forcing his head back to stop the bleeding.
Harlan was a little annoyed that he had to force himself to bleed, but this persona needed to actually be hurt, otherwise it wouldn’t have the right effect.
“What kind of man would I be if I didn’t step in?”
“One without a broken nose. Stay here, don’t get up until it stops bleeding.”
“Alright, Lilly.”
After a few minutes Harlan stopped the act, a rather rough looking group had walked in, and he would rather take their orders.
They were three Ibexian’s in full body armor with heavy maces hung on their sides.
On their chest was a mercenary crest of a sheep skull, meaning these men were hired on by a noble who was willing to let them fly their own colors. Such a thing was a rarity outside of the lands nearest the border with Reino or the frontier. Most nobles saw them as nothing but hired blades, which they were, and the idea of granting them the right to a crest was considered absurd.
“What can I get you?”
“Ale, three pitchers. What food do you have?”
“Today we have beef stew, mutton, and meat pies. For desert we have apple or pumpkin pies.”
“Mutton, three plates, two whole meat pies, 3 apple pies.”
“Alright, just a moment.”
Once he was out of what they believed to be earshot there was a small debate over him being a boy or a girl.
Harlan, or rather, Alex, brought back their order.
“Are you male or female?”
“I’m a man.”
Harlan puffed his chest and got a great big laugh that struck fear in a few of the drunks.
Lilly looked on, worried that he had upset them, but there were smiles all around, which didn’t really look much better.
For most people, Ibexians were scary, black goats were considered bad luck on account of a magical Black Goat and a mundane black goat being imperceptible for most people. And while most Ibexian’s were white or gray furred, these were all black.
“What are a group like you doing here? Monster hunting?”
“No, hunting a killer. Took down 30 knights and two black tagged adventurers.”
“Really? I’m scared just knowing men like that are out there.”
The leader of the group who had half a head on the other two narrowed his eyes.
“No, you aren’t. I think I’ve got a good sense for people.”
“Of course, how could I be scared knowing soldiers like you are in the area.”
“Captain, give the kid a break. He probably already heard the story, this is just one village over from Bearfast.”
“Yeah yeah yeah. How long have you been here? Are you a local?”
“Nope, came in about a week ago. I even passed through Bearfast, though it was before that fight happened.”
“You know what, get me another pitcher.”
Harlan was halfway to the bar when the captain threw his fork at Harlan. He panicked for a second as he tried to make it look convincing when he dodged just enough for it to cut his shirt, but not bounce off of his skin. He could fake a bloody nose by forcing veins to burst, but he couldn’t fake a cut so easily.
“The kid ain’t who he says he is.”
The captain was about to get up when his vice-captain, the only woman in the group, forced him back down.
“Sorry, sorry, he just likes testing people. No harm no foul?”
“Of course.”
Harlan picked up the sharp fork and went to wash it. The thought had crossed his mind to throw it back, but he had already done too much by reacting to the fork. He hid the fury he felt, things were going well, but Harlan couldn’t hide who he was well enough.
Meekness didn’t fit him, that much he was sure of.
The black goats stayed in town, from what Harlan learned by following them under stealth they were planning to just stay around until they found information to confirm or deny that Darrath had passed through.
The Seekers noted the direction Harlan had been traveling in when they found him, and this information was spread around.
“Cap, do you think the kid knows something?”
“He has a very bad feeling around him. Even if he isn’t the one we are looking for, he is a killer.”
“Not the one we are contracted to find though. From what we’ve heard, he hasn’t displayed an ounce of magic even, whatever he is, isn’t really our problem.”
“No, I went in there yesterday by myself, as soon as I imbibed he noticed. Who would see that? My fur is already black, it barely even changes when I use imbibing, but he saw that and from his face, he was trying to pretend that he didn’t see it.”
“You always get obsession, again, this isn’t really our problem.”
“I want to fight him.”
“Ur’Kalen, sit the fuck down. You’ll splatter the kid with a single strike. Yeah, he feels like he is hiding something, but he doesn’t feel overly strong.”
“No, there is something else that you guys don’t see. Ur’kul, you’ve been quiet.”
“Honestly? He scares the piss out of me. En’unn, you really couldn’t feel it?”
“No, not at all. Did you two look at how he interacts with people instead of how he makes you feel? I followed him like you asked, he helps old women carry their produce, he weeds flower beds for free, he bought a blanket for a homeless man and didn’t even stick around to hear a thank you.”
“Nobody is like that, there is a contrast in who he looks like and what he is. I’m going to prove it.”
Harlan had been sitting with the group out in the woods the entire time, none of them were divinationists, and so long as he had no ill intent towards them, their sixth sense shouldn’t pick him up.
The issue, was that last part.
Harlan dropped stealth when he saw Kalan look in his direction.
“So, I guess it is time for me to leave then.”
He dropped his head, as if he was deeply saddened by the news.
The Ibexians jumped from the stumps they were sitting on.
Kalen drew his mace but Unn stopped him from swinging.
“Get a hold of yourself, if he wanted to hurt us he would’ve done it without revealing himself. Alex, that is your name, right? Why don’t you explain this to them, why are you hiding.”
“I killed a man, I was a soldier once, but my commanding officer, he… one of the girls in my unit. I just saw the blood and I attacked him.”
Harlan cried crocodile tears.
“I’m sorry, I just, I can’t bear to see something like that, it just isn’t right. Then I came here, Lilly, she looks so much like her, I can’t leave her to be hassled by drunks all day, so I stopped running, hoped to settle down. But it's too late for that now, I’m sorry, just, take me in.”
“I’m sure that it is hard to handle that, but we aren’t guards, it isn’t our place to deal with someone who tried to do the right thing, even if it broke the law.”
The two men were baffled.
“You are buying this shit? He knows invisibility, normal soldiers don’t know that. Can you even name the current high general under the king?”
Harlan wished that he had thought his story through a little more. He knew that invisibility was restricted, but didn’t think they would catch on so quickly.
His tears dried and his tone returned to normal.
“Alright, you caught me. I didn’t kill a commander.”
Unn was embarrassed for falling for such a story, one meant to tug on heartstrings.
“Who did you kill?”
“A lot of people, bandits, knights, a mayor of a city once. Nobody who didn’t have it coming.”
The Ibexians stepped back and readied themselves for a fight.
“What about us?”
“That depends, do you plan to kill me? Does my past really matter when I’m trying to build a life here?
I really do want to protect Lilly from drunkards, because she seems genuinely nice and undeserving of that kind of attention.”
“Are you Darrath?”
“Don’t you people have a sketch? I’ve seen it on a wanted poster, black hair, brown eyes, 5’10. Unless you think I shrunk myself, I’m not him. So, do you want a fight? Or do you want to walk away from here?”
“Kalan, why don’t we calm down a little bit.”
“He has already said it himself, he is a murderer. If he killed a mayor in the past, he must have a bounty on him somewhere, we can still get a pay day.”
He lowered the visor on his helmet and got ready to fight. Unn might not have had a strong desire to fight him, but her captain said so, and it wasn’t like it wouldn’t still be just.
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Kalan stuck Harlan across the head, though instead of brain matter, all that blew in the wind was mist from an illusion.
In return he got a straight to his side, were it not for his armor and naturally hearty nature, his liver would’ve ruptured.
Harlan dodged another hit, this time from Unn, though this was never meant to hit, but rather to drive him into Kel.
Harlan only dodged by pulling himself to the ground and slipping between them. One thing Bojana had always stressed when fighting beastkin was that smaller opponents were trouble for them.
For Ibexians specifically they had poorer depth perception and a blind spot in the middle of their vision due to their rectangular pupils and eyes which were offset to the sides instead of straight forward like humans.
“Good teamwork. What happens when you lose a member though?”
Harlan stood horizontally on a tree and they used their soulsmithed weapons to fire lightning bolts.
This was just to buy time for Kalan to heal himself, but the results were still a little shocking. Harlan had driven away all both bolts with a counter spell called soaking orb, it and its brother spells were meant to pull in certain magical effects then safely split them back into mana. Though they could be overloaded and were often worse than using more specific spells, they excelled only against a single element and they did not redirect the attacks at their opponents. Harlan hadn’t done this because he was caught of guard, he simply didn’t want to harm these soldiers yet.
“What the hell? Counter spells?”
“You still have a chance to give up. Seriously, I'm not trying to kill you. Even if you are forcing me to leave this place right now. Last chance.”
Kalan had the wind back in his lungs.
“Don’t underestimate him, he is heavier than he looks, probably a gravity mage on top of imbibing. Damn kid dented my armor.”
“Seriously?”
“Come on, no need for bloodshed, I didn’t even use my weapon when I hit you.”
Harlan reached into his pocket and when it was brought back out he wore a heavy spiked glove, the rod had simply transformed once again.
They surrounded Harlan’s tree, a normal sized one since they were not in the deep forest, but rather they bordered a plain.
Harlan stepped down and they moved closer, a nod meant they had already known what the other was thinking without needing to give orders. They were a close knit group, their commander wasn’t making an army, just elites to handle dangerous targets.
They attacked with a rather simple pattern, they drove Harlan to the others who then drove him to another and they kept getting closer, their spiked maces cut thin lines in his flesh when he dodged a bit too closely.
Harlan realized that he wasn’t going to be able to play around, this wasn’t like the knights or Rent, these people could kill him if they were allowed a single hit to start a chain.
Instead of ducking Harlan jumped over a strike, generally speaking, this was suicide as men could not dodge in the air.
When the mace came from below and other above Harlan outstretched his hand and his foot, touching both of them and magnetizing them to one another.
The pair felt with a single pull that they wouldn’t get them unstuck easily, so they dropped the maces, pulling out long daggers, or short swords, Harlan couldn’t tell which.
Harlan deactivated the spell and picked up the maces with telekinesis, pulling one to his hands and casting hover on the other before tossing it into the air.
They had yet to realize that Harlan wasn’t using imbibing until this moment when he moved far faster than expected, swinging from low he hit Kel on the end of his snout, crushing his jaw and giving him whiplash that let him shaken, but still able to be healed..
The hover time ended moments later and the mace dropped.
Harlan flew up to it and then activated gravity magic, pulling him down.
Unn couldn’t believe it, Kel was the more cautious of them and the fastest, but in his rattled state with blood in his eyes there was no way for him to dodge. She threw herself in the way of the mace only for it to become weightless again, despite its speed, without the mass it was like having an acorn fall on her armored head.
Harlan jumped away and Unn tried to heal Kel as best she could while anticipating the counter attack.
“You know, if I didn’t cast hover again you could’ve died from that strike.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not one to abandon a brother like that.”
“Do you know why you never felt that I was dangerous? Because I’ve never felt threatened by you.
Kalan, he figured me out from the first second, but you are either naive or foolish, and weak too. If you were as strong as your brother he wouldn’t be laying in your arms with a fractured skull.
Does that weigh on you? That your weakness will be the death of him one day? Do you think that you got on your team out of pity?”
Kalan stopped her from speaking, they all knew that reacting to taunts was amateur hour shit.
“Your face and your words don’t match your actions. You felt some sympathy for her, that is why you stopped the attack from killing her. Tell me, what makes someone as young and little as you be that way?”
“Fear, crippling, endless, fear. What scares you?“
“The weight of the lives of my men under me. You?”
“That I will wake up one day, and my family will be gone, in the blink of an eye. That one day, I won’t be fast enough, or strong enough, or stable enough of mind to save them.”
Harlan clenched his fists as he spoke.
“So, please, I dislike the idea of killing people like you, who believe that they are doing the right thing.”
He relaxed as he gave his true final warning.
“Unn, keep healing Kul, then run, I’ll hold him off, call for reinforcements. He won’t go after you.”
“Captain, I can’t leave you to die.”
“The village has a communication station, the commander can get a gate here, I just need to hold him off for a little while. I’m counting on you.”
Harlan watched them run away, once they were out of sight he spoke.
“It is going to crush her for a time to come back and find your body.”
“I’m going to be honest, I’ve been holding back, I fight best alone.”
From Harlan’s estimation, he was using fire, water, and earth imbibing.
By using the three of them, they acted in a way to allow the physical backlash to be barely an issue so long as the spells could all be kept in sync with one another. To use more, the sync would need to be even closer, and so on and so forth.
Harlan barely dodged the first strike, and had the second one been downward, the fight would’ve ended right there.
His left arm was mangled, but could be healed.
The fight had instantly turned from an equal fight to a game of cat and mouth.
An Ibexian was a fusion between a human body and the body of an Ibex, the part which made them a stable creature unlike an orc was that the soul of the animal was not part of the equation beyond the physical, for the most part.
Ultimately, they were mountain goats with powerful legs and hooves that granted them grip beyond sense.
Harlan could barely stay away from the man who shot like a cannon ball at him, crushing small trees in his path. Were it not for them moving deeper and deeper into the forest where the trees rapidly ballooned in size and strength, Harlan felt that this might be the end.
Harlan finally had both arms back, he activated imbibing, earth and fire, and swung, not at the man, but at the mace.
Between both of them operating beyond their normal means, and Harlan pushing on the mace from the back with telekinesis, they shattered into dozens of pieces that Harlan could then blast towards his opponent now armed with nothing but a bent metal rod..
Kalan thought he had won.
Harlan was down his good arm this time, the hand that held the glove was sitting on the forest floor.
Yet the boy in front of him barely reacted, jumping back and grabbing the severed limb. The glove switching from right to left handed.
The first blow landed and Kalan felt his own armor turn against itself as the spikes dug into his flesh, the motion of breathing only opened more wounds.
He met the second with his own fist in a bid to hold his attacker off for just a second longer, but all he gained was more pain. Then they collided Kalan realized exactly how big the difference in equipment was, his fingers turned the wrong way, he felt the his forearm bones shatter, his armor crinkled and barely stopped his bones from shooting out of his elbow.
He could only barely try to deflect with his good arm and kick.
He watched Harlan move in a blur, destroying his knees and then hitting him once more, crushing his snout. Then the final blow didn’t come.
Harlan knelt down in front of the broken man.
“Do you think I should kill you?”
He would’ve laughed, but one of the strikes he couldn’t even follow punctured a lung. Harlan placed his hand on the man who expected darkness, instead he saw light.
Harlan had fixed the collapsed lung and nothing else.
“I need you to be able to answer me.”
He panted, his breathing hadn’t become normal, but it was better.
“Isn’t that what killers do?”
“Is the world better with, or without you?”
“If you don’t kill me now, I’m going to kill you, because you are not normal, I see it, you’ll just kill until there is nothing left.”
“Live a long life, I’ll leave you here for-”
Harlan took a deep breath, trying to contain his fury as the two minds got closer.
He was tired, he was losing blood, his adrenaline was fading and the pain began to creep into his mind.
The Ibexian woman stepped out from behind a tree with Lilly in hand.
“You are going to turn yourself in, or I’ll snap her neck.”
“I thought you were reasonable.”
“Step back from my captain.”
“Unn, stop.”
“Alex, whoever you are, give up.”
“You shouldn’t have brought her into this.”
Harlan took one step but found himself crossing half the distance between them, then another and he was in front of the Ibexian woman.
“I give up, take me in.”
Harlan raised his remaining hand and Unn grabbed him, receiving a white noise attack for her efforts.
“I want to kill you, but I don’t know if I should.”
She had no idea what had happened as she fell to the ground and watched Harlan reach into a pouch.
“Heads, or tails?”
Unn could not answer.
Harlan flipped the coin.
“Lucky.”
Harlan leaned on Lilly
“Are you ok? You aren’t hurt?”
She had tears in her eyes.
“What the fuck happened here?”
“I’m not who I said I was. Sorry I lied.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I need food.”
Lilly brought him back to the village, hiding him with a woman who he had tilled the garden of just earlier that day.
More men, not all of them Ibexian, came out of a gate wearing the sheep skull crest. Kul was being healed but Unn had left a message with the guard about what had happened so they could find them.
Were it not for the state that Kul was in and the fact that Unn was willing to kidnap Lilly for the sake of stopping ‘Alex’ they would’ve tried to arrest her.
The divinationists led the way, but they would only find one of their best captains beaten near to death and a vice captain humiliated.
A guard knocked on the door of the old woman, noticing droplets of blood near her home.
He looked inside, saw the old woman who had been there since the village had been founded, the young woman he liked from the tavern, and a man who looked to be knocking on deaths door.
Lilly was pleading with her eyes.
One of the other guards saw him standing there and not saying anything.
“Did you find him?”
“No.”
He walked away.
Harlan nearly ate everything that the old woman out of everything she had as he healed himself.
Finally it was past midnight when he left. Lilly had left earlier to pretend that everything was fine and to tell the Black Goat’s that he had left her near the edge of the forest and then went south.
Harlan stepped inside the tavern where he had spent the last week.
Blood stains on the floor and splintered chairs showed signs of a struggle, one of the normal patrons must’ve tried to stop Unn and paid the price.
He walked up to the room he had been given and grabbed the pouch. 40 gold coins were inside.
Then he went to the kitchen, finding the owner, Thomas, sitting with his wife, a large gash on his head that had since stopped bleeding. They were both just cleaning up the aftermath.
Harlan dropped his stealth.
“Alex? You need to run, that she-goat, she has gone insane-”
Under the candlelight he saw the blood that covered his clothes.
“I’m sorry that you got hurt in all of this. I know that you have a lot of pride in this place, so please, take this.”
He tossed the pouch of gold to the man and then walked up to him, in just a few moments it was like he had never been hurt.
“Are you leaving? Is Lilly alright?”
“Lilly is alright, she is at the healer resting someone quieter.”
“This… this is bullshit”
The man stood, his jowls jiggling as he spoke with righteous fury. Lilly called him a bulldog once and got yelled at.
“They can’t come in here, attack us, then get away with it. If you go to the guard, they’ll protect you.
The whole village would have you back. Damn soldiers, trading blood for coin and thinking they can judge you.”
“Use the gold to fix up the place, give some of it to Lilly, some of it to the old woman who lives on the east of the village, then I don’t care what you do with it. I’m sorry things are going to end this way. And don’t hold a grudge against them, don’t fight, just stay down. I don’t want to see you hurt for protecting me. Tell them you never felt right about me, that you were afraid of what I might do if you didn’t hire me. It doesn’t matter.”
“Not a godsdamned chance.”
“Have a good life. Do you mind if I take some food?”
“I’ll take it out of your payment for the day.”
Harlan thought that it was a good place, he was glad that he had stopped.
He was especially glad that the guard had not tried to bring him in.
In the worst case, he would’ve let his armor take over and flee, but that would’ve been quite a bit of trouble to explain. If someone saw the armor it would lead to more questions about his casting and his strength.