They stepped out into the yard and Harlan could see the edge of the world, it was like they were a ship in a bottle.

“Is this where the camp takes place?”

“I’m a little shocked that you caught that, but almost, it isn’t this one, but it is one of these.”

“The plants inside the forest were all wrong. You had summer and winter plants at the same time, and your stars are wrong.”

Xol stepped out.

“They aren’t wrong, they are just based on how I remember my sky. The plants are because I wanted to add herbs for the children, you can even find salt if you start to dig around in the ground.”

“Xol might not always like people, and he talks strangely so they stop asking him a thousand questions, but he cares. Now, onto gate. Lay down right here under this tree, put your head on my lap.”

He did as asked but his cheeks flushed a little red.

“I know you are a growing boy, but don’t do anything weird or I’ll make you do this Xol’s way.

Close your eyes, and think about who this makes you want to be with.”

She brushed his hair with her hand.

“Now lock onto that feeling, think about how you want to be there with them right now.”

After a few minutes Harlan had a strained look on his face.

“Don’t force it, let that feeling flow from your mind into your soul and then out of your body.”

After another 10 minutes, Harlan’s tapped into an old memory, he remembered when he didn’t pretend to sleep and his mother would try to get him to bed.

He hummed a lullaby that she would sing.

Space bent and folded, and he barely used any mana for the spell.

A nearly perfect cut out, like staring through a window, into his parent’s home.

His gate was ‘nearly’ perfect not due to any defect, but rather it was just how his gate was.

It had a thin black border, like a painting in its frame, making the edges of the gate more clearly defined and preventing things from slipping between the cracks in reality. It was entirely subconscious, but did make the gate more secure than a normal one and safer to leave open as certain things… could not come though.

His mother called all of the guards, Harlan hadn’t just cast gate, he also punched through every defense that was set up to stop people from doing this and thus set off a lot of alarms.

This was the gate which Sepul could cast, born from his desire to always reach his family if there was an emergency. It bypassed the arrays because it wasn’t technically a spell as people thought of it. Instead of following rules and the mana doing what was asked, like a lock and a key, this was more like asking the mana to grab the key and open the door by itself.

Most arrays and wards just didn’t understand what was happening and thus failed to see the issue, since uncontrolled mana was something that simply floated around and was required for arrays.

Harlan stood up and his mother called off the guards.

“Harlan? What is, where are you? Who is she?”

“Should I tell her?”

“No need. Good morning Lady Aida, I am Marigold. I’ve had Harlan for a day and a half or so, I’ve now taught him how to cast gate.”

His mother looked at him and he nodded yes.

The Unseen collectively shrugged their shoulders, they had no idea if that woman was who they said she was, but they could see Xol standing behind her and there were only so many floating skeletons wearing robes and a crown and holding a staff that looked like a giant crystal rose.

It was this rose that was on the healers pin.

The Unseen called Dahlia, who called Sepul, who said that this is the woman who he met in the past and claimed to be Marigold. She was just slightly offended that he didn’t use strong enough words to confirm who she said she was.

“I’m starting to feel like an animal at a menagerie at this point.”

Dahlia had to stop herself from speaking, but as anyone who enjoyed magic, and especially as a woman who enjoyed magic and whose ability to learn it and be seen as somewhat of an equal in society was directly tied to her, well, it was a very happy day for Dahlia.

“I think that it is time for Harlan to return home then.”

Her window of opportunity was closing, so she took her shot.

“Miss Marigold.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t have a question, I just wanted to speak with you. You are a hero, a living legend, the mother of magic.”

“Thank you, it is always nice to know that people still appreciate me. I’ve been with this runt and he only seems to thank me for my cooking. Barely even reacted to learning who I am.”

She tugged on Harlan’s ear.

“Ow, sorry, thank you for teaching me gate.”

“You’re supposed to thank me for my wonderful life advice and my hospitality to bring you into my own home.”

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, I should’ve said it more.”

“It’s alright, because I can’t stay mad at you.”

Everyone was suddenly very uncomfortable, processing that when the gate opened, Harlan was seemingly taking a nap while using her thighs as a pillow and she was brushing his hair.

Now she was being very affectionate with the boy to the point Aida thought it was bordering on a bit too far.

Had anything more happened she would step through the gate and give her a piece of her mind.

“Come on, up, up, back home with you. I want to get a quilt finished up.”

Harlan walked through the gate and waved goodbye, and then it took him another minute of focusing to make it close.

“Mom, I know, I should’ve called you, but-”

She broke a wooden spoon across his wrist, knowing that he couldn’t be hurt by her, but not knowing how else to really voice how upset she was.

“YOU’VE BEEN GONE FOR ALMOST 2 MONTHS, NO CALLS, NOT EVEN TO SAY THAT YOU ARE STILL ALIVE?”

“It is hard to do that when you spend weeks in the wilderness and then an immortal hero invites you to her house outside of this world to learn magic.”

She couldn’t technically contradict his story, nobody could actually. It was the perfect cover, Sepul could confirm that it was in fact Marigold, and Xol was also there, and the idea that a 15 year old boy could be taught gate in a matter of weeks by anyone else would be nothing but a bad joke.

His mother raised the wooden spoon that had already put itself back together, but stopped herself.

“If you do anything like that again, I will ground you.”

He was about to open his mouth, but through a miracle, his mind caught up to it and shut him up.

“I don’t want to hear a word about what I can and cannot do, you are still my son.”

Harlowe had been sitting at the dining room table the entire time and loudly sipped his tea.

“Welcome back. Did you have fun?”

“She is a very nice person, and a great cook. Almost as good as mom.”

“Hmm…”

He was reading a newspaper, not everyone got them, but they were nobles, as wrong as it felt for the farmers to be, and so they felt that they should start reading it to find out what was happening outside of talking to other people.

“So, does that mean you can help me deliver the vegetables more quickly?”

“I would love to, but Adina is going to skin me alive as soon as I get back.”

“First lovers spat?”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“Not really, we’ve disagreed before.”

“First real fight then. Bring her a gift, maybe a nice knife so she doesn’t cut herself when she skins you.”

“Are you in shock? You are being… calm about all this.”

“I just can’t get worked up like I could before. Whatever happens, you are going to be alright, I trust you to do the right thing. Adina is going to be very mad, but she will come around.”

“Are you sure?”

“She called me a few days ago to ask for advice; I can’t say what about, but if she came to me, then she trusts me and still wants to be part of the family.”

“I’ll go to Tole, get her a nice cake, she has a sweet tooth.”

Harlowe hadn’t looked up from the paper once yet.

“And flowers.‘

“Yes, I’ll get flowers.”

“You better know her favorites.”

“Orchids, she likes orange orchids.”

“I forgot once, 5th anniversary. Your mo-”

“Do not tell him that story.”

“Nothing happened on your mother and I’s 5th anniversary.”

Sepul broke up the odd family moment.

“You have your own gate now, so don’t expect to call me for this anymore. I will be going first so it is clear when you step through that it is your own gate and not mine. Also, you are still early enough that she is likely still in her room for the next 40 minutes.”

“You keep track of that?”

He blipped back to the academy without another word. It was hard for Sepul to show affection to Harlan, and in that moment he lost his composure and failed to remember that he could just pretend he was spying on Adina, not keeping a protective eye on her.

The results would be the same, but it was the feeling behind his actions that mattered.

Harlan wanted to ask if teleport was based on the same principle as gate and he just needed to think harder to make it work.

It would be another two days before the news of what had happened, or rather, the news that the crown wanted to put out, reached the entire kingdom.

A count trying to kill another wasn’t an entirely rare thing, but Harlan showing up out of nowhere and crushing a detachment of a count’s army by killing over a hundred specialists, including warmages and 600 knights on top of the costs of losing all of that equipment, was very rare.

When he stepped through a gate without anyone with him at the academy, and that his gate was unlike others, he got called over to the front desk of the gate office.

“Harlan Fomoria, would you like to be registered as a gate mage?”

“That depends, what will that mean for me?”

“You would be added into the register of mages who can be hired for gate, that is more or less all that it is. If you don’t want to be on the list it isn’t an issue, it is a way in which mages can earn some extra coin and build connections to hopefully be hired on as a personal gate mage.”

“No, I do not want to be added to the list. I intend to use my gate when I want to for myself and those who I choose to use it for.”

“Very well. Have a good day, oh, would you like a pin that marks you as gate capable?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before, why not?”

“They are generally stored in someones home, framed on a wall to avoid damaging them.”

“If you have one ready, I would take it.”

The older woman reached into a draw and pulled one out.

“Here you go. Do you have any questions?”

“No.”

“Have a nice day, Archmage Changeling.”

Harlan gave a small bow and left.

He took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

Adina kept it bolted shut, and even when she unlocked it she kept a chain on the door.

Harlan’s paranoia had rubbed off on her, just slightly.

When she opened the door she could hear his new heart that beat like a wardrum in his chest, blunted only by the dense bones and muscle fibers of his body.

Through the crack Harlan see her wearing his jacket and ring that he left behind.

“Get in here, now.”

Harlan couldn’t blame her for being upset, and he expected to receive a strike once out of sight.

“Adina, I’m-”

“Sit down, shut up, I am going to talk.”

Harlan did as asked, placing the cake and flowers on the table between them.

“Did you find yourself?”

“I-”

“Shut up.”

Harlan waited for her anger to hit a low point before he broke the silence that they had been awkwardly sitting in for the last 10 minutes.

“I got you cake and flowers.”

“I know, I can smell them. Orchids, lemon cake.”

“Orange orchids.”

“I don’t remember telling you that I like them.”

“When we walked through the garden at Blackstone’s, you lingered in front of the orange ones for a minute longer than the other flowers.”

“They were beautiful. I’m shocked that you remembered that, I didn’t even remember it until now.”

“I hoped that once I corrected your eyes, that I could give you a bouquet.”

“Your heart, it sounds… different. Are you still you?”

“I killed a wyvern, subsuming its body to enhance my own. But I am all Harlan still.”

“Is that why you got taller?”

She pulled him off of the couch and touched the top of his head.

“Yeah, part of it.”

“You’ve changed.”

“I learned how to cast gate, and I met Marigold again, you would like her.”

“Mary is a good person.”

“How did you know?”

“Because she told me, I was… upset. But she said she had been watching you.

Your birthday is close, I think we should celebrate it.”

“Just you and me.”

“Just you and me.”

She gave him a kiss and he didn’t pull back out of awkward feelings this time.

“We should probably go see everyone else.”

“We should. But instead I’ll bring breakfast back here.”

“Alright. Do you want to invite Amber? She wasn’t very happy that you left without telling her and I think we can take you two on one..”

“I doubt it.”

On the way Harlan ran into Zella.

“You’re back?”

“Just came in this morning.”

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I feel fine. I talked with Adina, and I’m picking up breakfast for the two of us. She said I should invite Amber. Oh, and I can cast gate now.”

Many people in the hallway froze.

“You are fucking with me.”

Zella had been studying spatial magic for years, and had not cast a gate yet. Harlan left for two months after never once stepping foot in one of the classes and cast one of the highest level spells next to a long range teleport.

“No, I learned it from Marigold. I can ask if I am allowed to use her method.”

“You are fucking with me.”

“I’ve got to get the food, see you later.”

Zella’s friend walked up to her.

“Do you think he was-”

“Yes, of course he is, Harlan is always- He is just such a-”

“freak of nature.”

“Do not talk about Harlan like that, or I’ll-”

Her hair curled into fists not unlike an angry octopus. She was upset because she felt it was unfair, but at the same time, Harlan was still one of her best friends and did not want to hear anyone who she also called a friend speak poorly of him.

“Sorry, I mean that he is just… I don’t know, gifted?”

“He is cursed. Always learning something new to kill himself with. I’m not mad at him, no, actually I am.

But I know I shouldn’t be. Let’s go eat. Do you want to see him cast gate?”

“I’m not sure that-”

“You are always avoiding Harlan, why not give him a chance to know him like I do.”

“Because he is…”

“He knows that he gets that reaction from people, but really, he is a sweet guy.”

Harlan came back through with several plates and Amber in tow.

“Oh, Zella, I met Ky, I’ll tell you about it later. But he is doing just fine.”

“I look forward to it.”

When he returned he found Seekers and golems waiting for him.

“Good morning.”

“We are here to speak with you about-”

A second set of Seekers arrived.

“Sir Formoia, we are here to speak with you about-”

“If I am being arrested then do it, If not, send a letter with a court date. I have more important things to do.”

“This is a very serious issue, what could be more important?”

Harlan grinned.

“Breakfast with my dear sister and my fiance.”

He walked past them and knocked on Adina’s door, one of the first set of Seekers reached for him.

The man stopped only when Harlan turned back, his eyes slit like a predator.

“If you intend to stop me, without having authority to arrest me, I will remove that hand.”

Adina opened the door.

“Should I be worried?”

“Nope, let’s eat and talk. Excuse me.”

The two sets of Seeker’s looked at one another after Harlan closed the door.

“There is nothing to be done, we should return and await orders.”

“We have a job to do. Sir Fomoria must face charges for his actions, a few days in a cell while we gather evidence is sure to give him some respect for our work.”

“If everything we’ve heard it correct, and I assume that you have read the up to date reports,

then Sir Fomoria would kill you without a second thought if he didn’t believe you had authority.

Do not test the boy, you’ll only make a mess, and I don’t want to see a fellow Seeker die while carrying out his duty.”

The second set were two men in their late 20s, and the first were two men in their early 20s, ones who answered to Alder.

“It would be just to-”

“Seekers do not have conflicts between them. We will return to sort out who has authority before anything else.”

It was nothing but a stall tactic, something to buy time for Rosewell to find out his mental state.

Seekers not conflicting was an unofficial motto of sorts, they should never have a problem with one another because they all represented the law as written; they could not openly disagree with one another unless backed by evidence of something that could justify the disagreement.