Snow crunched under his feet as he made his way to the tavern.

Jas called him for help since some Knights of Orelend had arrived and were looking for two girls who matched their description.

As he got closer, he activated his invisibility.

He could hear a man yelling.

“HAVE, YOU, SEEN, THESE WOMEN.”

The elderly woman who ran the place finally understood him.

“Ah, yeah, I saw them.”

“WHERE?”

“No need to shout. They are right over there. Oh, they must’ve left.”

“If you are intentionally interfering with an investigation I’ll-”

“Shut up, I’ve lived long enough and I have no family for you to threaten. I hope they are halfway to another village by now. Sweet girls.”

The knight raised his hand to strike her. At her age, and with his armored gauntlet, it would be fatal.

Though instead of landing a blow the man’s head exploded from Harlan’s own slap.

A large mace from an invisible enemy struck from his left, then another from his right.

Harlan caught both of them with his hands, strongly magnetizing them to prevent another attack.

The pair yanked as hard as they could, hoping to rip his arms off.

“Unn, Kel, good to see you again. Kalan, why didn’t you take part in the attack? Oh, and those other 20 or so men, are they also part of the black sheep?”

A voice from nowhere replied.

“I told you having invisibility wouldn’t help.”

Harlan found himself surrounded, but he still had a smile on his face.

“I hope you haven’t stooped so low as to work for a bastard like Orelend to kidnap two innocent girls.”

“They have bounties in 14 counties for banditry.”

“The sisters are nothing but petty criminals, not exactly the kind that need so many men to capture.”

The embossed skull made a scandalized expression, hiding his fury behind a face of sarcasm.

“Oh, wait, was this all for me? You surely know how to make a man blush. But, if you come at me, I might not show mercy again.”

Harlan put the body of the dead knight on a barstool and laid him on the counter, as if he had passed out drunk.

“And, if you do want a fight, I think that this is a poor place, so many things that can break, and there are bystanders. I’d rather not have to worry about what you might do if an attack missed, because then I really would need to kill you all.”

“Our contract is rather clear, we just need to bring in two bandits, and kill anyone who gets in the way.”

Harlan cracked his neck.

“I consider Jas a friend of mine, her sister is part of a package deal. So, I guess that makes me someone in the way. Why don’t we make our way out of town, I’ll stand in the middle of your encirclement and you can all come at me.”

“No deal.”

Kalan rushed Harlan, if he dodged, the old woman behind him, along with the wall, would be broken.

It was a bit of an issue since Jas and Kelly were both hiding under the floor of that room.

Kal and Unn were supposed to catch him when he tried to dodge to the left or right.

So, Harlan didn’t dodge.

With fire and earth imbibing, and his new body, his strength and speed were far above what it was when they last fought.

Harlan pulled back both of his arms, and then with a frightening boom, they burst forward, sending Kalan flying out of the door, his chestplate digging into him, but he was alive.

Unn and Kel went for the attack, thinking Harlan paid some cost for his strength, not an unfair assumption, as they knew he was not nearly this strong last time, and they assumed he abused fire imbibing.

He pulled out his rod, turning it into a mace with many short and thick spikes.

Unn’s mace shattered, then with a spin of his body, Harlan tossed her into her brother who had to avert his attack.

“Unn, I was told that sparing you was actually a bad idea, and that someone like you who is willing to take an innocent hostage cannot be trusted to not do worse.”

The pair had gotten back to their feet and she pulled a blade as more men rushed into the building.

Some Minos, some Ursa, even an Armaus, no humans.

“I wonder, do you call that a dagger, or is it a shortsword?”

Harlan had bought enough time, and when the gate opened, he pulled up the floor and tossed the sisters through it directly to Bearfast. He couldn’t go all the way home with just one gate, so he sent them somewhere that he thought would be safer.

When it closed, Jas saw a blade let off sparks as it contacted Harlan’s armor.

Harlan contorted his body with wind and water imbibing, flowing through the crowded room towards the door, their large physiques and weapons prevented them from hitting him without risking their own people or catching on the ceiling..

Near the exit stood the Armaus, he still couldn’t tell the men and women apart aside from looking at their souls.

He held 8 swords with their telekinesis and was preparing more spells with his hands.

While Halran wasn’t afraid, his sixth sense disagreed. Whoever this was, they were very likely the strongest mage in the group.

Harlan jumped upward and through the roof, dropping alchemical poisons down the hole.

Though this was nothing but a distraction as he guided a certain vial towards the Armaus through the red fog.

The Armaus screamed in terror as the acid made its way past his armor and began to seep between the natural plating of its shell.

Harlan had learned that they were quite sensitive and often they had skin care issues if they could not keep dirt and grime from building up. He read that they were a species renowned for their cleanliness as a result.

Outside there were more knights who were backed up by Black Sheep.

Yet Harlan just kept running, cutting down men with little regard, they all worked for that man.

The village guards who stood in his way probably had no idea what was really happening, so Harlan simply shoved them to the side as he burst through the closed gate, using beams of void to weaken the structure. While he would like to just fly over, going airborne with so many mages behind him would see enumerable bolts of energy flying at him, on the ground he could at least use lightning rod spells.

Kalan was barely conscious, he tried to warn them not to follow Harlan into the forest.

Once outside of the village, fireballs, stones, some spells that Harlan didn’t even recognize all flew at him, and yet they were all deflected or simply endured depending on Harlan’s estimations of power.

Barely visible was the beam of void that shot him, nearly boring a hole through his armor and causing him to stumble. But instead of falling, Harlan remembered his training, tucking into a roll and getting right back up to dodge the second beam.

He looked back to see a furious Armaus, tucking in and out of a roll as they cast the spell.

It had managed to use its telekinesis to scrape the acid off of its body before it suffered major damage, and was very unhappy was Harlan.

He returned his own beam of void at the ball of death, only for it to cast a radiant beam which clashed and turned both attacks into nothing.

Then when Harlan tried to keep countering the spells the Armaus countered the counter spells.

Char marks and crystal and ice and stone began to accumulate as Harlan was no longer able to prevent further damage.

Harlan reached the treeline by finally using imbibing to speed up, he only avoided doing so up to this point because he needed them to keep up with him and not split up too much..

He only got farther and farther away as he jumped between trees with an agility that could only be matched by the Ibexian units.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Yet the issue was, when the first of them caught up, they failed to realize that Harlan had slowed himself down on purpose.

Much like with his arm wrestling with Ky, even if Harlan wasn’t stronger, he could wear down his opponents over time. A Fomorian was an endurance hunter.

Harlan turned off hover and used another spell to stop his momentum.

Harlan knew that he was an immovable object if he chose to be, the question he wanted to know was, how unstoppable was his enemy?

When the Ibexian ran into Harlan at full speed mid air, his bones broke, his armor twisted into daggers against its wearer, but he was alive.

The next one realized the mistake of the first and positioned his spear to catch such a trick, if Harlan stopped himself completely again, then all of that immovable energy could be used to help pierce him.

Yet the 10 foot long spear lost in range to the shapeshifting rod that turned needle thin.

Harlan gouged out the man’s eyes by making it hook to the left, but he did not finish him off.

The remaining Ibexians, including Kel and Unn, stopped trying to actually catch him, instead they moved ahead in an attempt to just slow him down enough for the others to catch up.

Harlan simply stood still; he reached his destination.

“I think this has gone on far enough.”

He plopped down on a large tree branch that creaked under his weight.

“I’ve not killed any of your people, so why don’t we call this even?”

“Three trained soldiers, damn good ones at that, losing to one man, it makes us look bad. We can’t ever say that we killed you, but people will find out one way or another. The mercenaries who killed Harlan Fomoria! We’ll get all kinds of work with something like that floating around.”

“Is that really why you took the job? Petty revenge.”

“You almost killed my brother.”

“If I was so evil, I would’ve. So I need to ask, do you care?”

“This isn’t about good or evil, reputation is a matter of business.”

“Does your boss know? Is he the kind of man who would use two women as bait to draw out a 16 year old?”

“Files says you are 15. And do you think we got 30 soldiers ready without him saying so?”

“Today is my birthday. I was with my friends before I got the call from Jas. I wanted to give you people a gift, but you’ve failed my test, completely and utterly.”

Harlan’s tone went cold.

“This too, is just a matter of business.”

Harlan jumped down from the tree with a mighty thump, the others had arrived.

He thought about the timezone changes, if it takes 20 minutes, lunch should just be ready when he gets back.

6 Black Sentinels uncloaked themselves, each of them killing a single target after a short exchange.

The remaining men caught up to find the scene of Black-1 snapping Kel’s neck, a loud echo passed through the forest, the sound having been magically amplified to demoralize them.

Harlan gave a simple command.

“Kill them all.”

The mountains of metal, born from anger, followed through on his command.

Though mentally, Harlan sent a special command to Black-1.

As soon as the Armaus revealed himself in an attempt to counter one of Harlan’s spells, a deafening boom came from the Sentinel.

The large soulsmithed round easily pierced the armor and then shell of the small man with the speed of a lightning bolt.

A click could barely be heard over the echo, he had 4 more shots. Harlan wished to fit 6 shells inside of him, but one for each damaging element was good enough for the trial run.

The Sentinels fought like Harlan, parts of them could be cut off or damaged, but so long as enough was left, they could be fixed.

So they didn’t mind losing plates of armor if it meant getting a kill.

Their forms would take hours to fix, these men were never coming back.

When it became clear to the scouts flying high above that the battle was effectively lost, they tried to call it in.

But then 1 hit them with the earth shell, though it wasn’t on a collision course, it didn’t matter since it split into dozens of smaller shards that broke bones even with the earth imbibing that they attempted to use.

Next he fired the fire shell into a group, molten metal detonated in the center, causing more screams to echo throughout the battlefield.

An Ice shell struck only a small area, and 1 wanted to show off, so he froze the arms of two men together, giving the Sentinels an easy target.

Last, but not least, dark shells.

Harlan wanted to make sure that this one did not hit anything but its target on the first hit.

Testing had indicated that it could discriminate to an extent, but hitting the ground with this one was not ideal for anything in the surrounding area.

The shell seemed to not do anything at first as it passed through the man’s skin but didn’t cause damage.

Then the man felt violently ill and as the darkness crept through his system.

He barely had time to realize something was wrong before a black mist poured out of him.

It was painless, at least for the first target who got the full dose of magical plague.

The men around the first one fell to the ground as they were used

Those who realized what was happening fast enough cast simple healing spells that were actually effective. In a case where they got to a healer, or just had the time to do it themselves, they would survive without issue, but they did not have the time.

It was an attack designed to kill a target who hadn’t yet realized what happened, but not one which would be hard to stop with even the simplest of light magic. Plague magic was frowned upon with good reason, even if it couldn’t really spread infinitely like a real plague, its nature was that of indiscriminate death.

Harlan wanted to see how each of the shells reacted in a real fight, and thus far, they met his expectations.

Though if Garad learned that each of these cost 2 gold each, he would burst a blood vessel.

Harlan pulled in money like a house 100 times his size, but he spent it like a house 90 times his size.

He was not overly wealthy by the standards of counts, but he could build a new village every year and not feel hurt financially.

Harlan jumped through a man by turning his helmet into a spear like tip.

He dashed around the battlefield, flickering in and out of sight as he cut down men who had spent their lives learning to kill. This event was little more than… cleaning a wound to prevent further infections.

There was one man left, an Ursa, crawling on the ground without feet but still being restrained by the Sentinels other than 1. Due to his real mind and soul, he had to actually avoid looking at the sigils.

Harlan was going tree to tree, drawing his sigils on the trees by dipping his fingers into the severed heads of his enemies.

Once they were done, Harlan spoke.

“I need to deliver a message. Sometimes, death is a mercy.”

Harlan shifted the parts where there were once feet into smooth stumps, then he plucked out one of the Ursa's eyes. Through the use of flesh sculpting, this would become the natural state of the man.

No healer, without soul magic at least, would be able to give back the eye, or the feet that had been taken away.

To finish it, Harlan erased the sigils, one at a time.

The man felt overcome with a sense of wrongness as his body and soul disagreed on what was the reality of flesh and bone.

In a week, he would lose the sense of phantom limbs.

In another week, he would finally find someone who could heal him, granting him a new kind of phantom pain.

Harlan returned to the village with a gate, finding Kalan was still recovering from his injuries, but was fit enough that he took a combat stance.

“If you fight me now, I’ll kill you, or, you can go rescue the one man who is left.”

The Sentinels had their large clawed hands on their blades, nobody would be stupid enough to face a seven on one fight under these circumstances. Even the guards who outnumbered Harlan ten to one had no desire to try their luck.

Kalan holstered his mace.

“Unn and Kel…”

“So many lives needlessly lost, and for what, some foolish pride?”

Harlan was upset that he had to do what he did. Yes, he was the one who chose to fight instead of run, but these men chose to go after him.

“These deaths are on my hands, but they are on your head. Remember this.”

Harlan stepped through the gate to Bearfast, covered in blood.

“I am looking for two girls, Jas and Kelly.”

The gate guards turned their spears on him.

“I am Harlan Fomoria. Though last time I came through here, you would’ve known me as Darrath.”

Harlan walked forward, ignoring the mundane attacks that had no chance of harming him.

He could feel that the two of them were in the guardhouse, Rent and Griv were with them.

Before he stepped inside he used blood magic to clean himself from the red ice that had accumulated on him.

Rent and Griv got ready to fight when they heard the guards shouting.

Then they saw Harlan walk in. They both already knew the identity of Darrath and they looked into Harlan. From the ring to the way he carried himself to the armor, they knew it was him.

“Rent, it has been a little while. Griv, your arm looks normal.”

“Thank you, Sir Fomoria.”

Harlan groaned.

“I’d rather have the sarcastic, lazy, overqualified man, not another lapdog.”

Rent averted his eyes.

“How is Jack?”

“Fine, just fine.”

“Harlan, how can I help you? I hope you didn't come back for more trouble.”

“Two girls, I sent them here by gate.”

“Yep, right this way.”

Jas and Kelly were drinking hot cider in Griv’s office.

The younger sister ran up and hugged Harlan.

“I knew that you would be ok. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about what we did before. I didn’t-”

“It’s alright, I asked around about where that shield had been seen, and I found a string of robberies.

I knew you two were bandits a week ago.”

Kelly didn’t get up, nor did she look his way.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You heard that?”

“I’ve got good hearing. Now, I need to know, where do you want me to take you? This place probably isn’t safe anymore.”

“Hey, Harlan, who are these two, and why wouldn’t it be safe here.”

“Because I just killed almost 30 mercenaries of the Black Sheep and left the last disfigured. I’m sure I killed some Knights of Orelend, not Oreland, along the way, but the monotony makes it blur together.”

Rent and Griv both left, seeing that whatever happened, really wasn’t their problem.

“Hey, about giving us a home, is that still an option?”

“Of course. Single or double cabin?”

“Kelly, which one?”

“Double.”

“Alright then, I’ll give it my full attention, tomorrow. I’ve got friends over, you don’t need to meet them though, you can just stay in a guest room if you aren’t comfortable with so many new people.”

“Yeah, I think we should.”

“Just a few gates to get there, oh, and it is going to be much warmer, so once you get the chance, one of my people can take you into town to buy clothes for the warmer months.”

“What about our record? We are wanted.”

“If anyone tries to arrest you, I’ll warn them, if they continue, I will kill them. Are you ready to go now?”

Harlan’s embossed skull smiled at her.