Rosewell forced Harlan to sleep by using a potion on his dinner without his consent.
Hostin watched over him as he slept, no one had tried to kill him in over 30 hours at least, the attacks started 6 days ago after a prince wandered into the area where he was doing tests and saw him working.
Rumors grew in intensity from then on.
Those who feared what he could do and those who just wanted to discredit Rosewell who wasn’t even trying to be in running for next ruler both saw him as a threat, leading to a case in which 2 assassins tried at the same time and killed each other in the confusion.
When morning came Harlan had already been awake for hours, doing whatever exercises he could to pass the time.
Hostin was only relieved of duty when Rosewell walked in, flanked by a single royal guardsmen.
Not to be confused with a castle guard who are more often sons of nobles who want a prestigious but safe job, the royal guards were only selected from the best and could be directly tasked only by the royal family.
Today this mountain of a woman with deep black hair streaked brown and sharp features was tasked with guarding Harlan and his friends as he was sent on a mandated vacation by Rosewell.
She was going to be there but she was worried about Harlan snapping still and didn’t want him left with Relly.
“Good morning Harlan. I hope you rested well. Hostin you may rest for a time before we leave.”
“You said no manipulation, you drugged me to get me into bed AGAIN.”
Rosewell noticed the look on the faces of the others in the room.
“The boy just has a poor way of phrasing me forcing him to rest. Now, Harlan, we are not going to the dungeon today, you need to unwind before you break, you will not solve all your problems by simply throwing yourself at it until something clicks for you. You will be seeing your friends today for a picnic. This woman next to me is Safira Efren, she is a royal guard and will be protecting us while we are out today. She is far more powerful than anyone you have met before so you do not need to worry about safety today. We will be leaving as soon as you are ready. ”
“I’m fine, I just need a little more time, I am almost there.”
Rosewell used a sound spell to make a loud bang behind him, Harlan responded with a wave of fire that would’ve turned any unwarded furniture into little more than cinders.
It didn’t take much more than that to make Harlan see how tightly wound he really was.
Harlan walked through a gate leading to a clearing in a forest with large shading trees.
Relly was chasing around a butterfly, Zella was climbing trees, Reet was racing her.
A large blanket was set on the ground with baskets of food on it.
But Harlan didn’t see all this first, he first saw that there is no cover in the case of an attack, that the butterfly Relly was chasing was faintly magical, and that the person who was supposedly Reet didn’t have a cap on, he was on edge over every single detail.
“Harlan, where have you been, it’s been so long!” Relly hugged him, but what he noticed was that her speech was also faintly touching his soul.
“Can you repeat that? I want to test something.”
“No. Miss Rosewell said you need to stop testing things and relax.” She stood defiantly with her arms crossed, Harlan still got what he wanted though. He made a connection using the power of his soul directly to her, bypassing her mind.
“You, testing, Rosewell.”
Relly shivered, she didn’t know what it was like when someone poked around their head until now, even when others spoke to her it was a 1 one way connection with her just picking up their thoughts.
“You’re scaring me…”
He broke the connection and returned to using her connection to speak with her.
“Sorry, I just realized how your speaking works a bit, I think I might be able to help you some. But I’ll need to speak with Miss Rosewell about it.”
“Really…?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you Relly.”
He finally returned her hug, he was just starting to calm down, slowly.
“Harlan, when you are speaking with Relly I ask that you please use your voice so you don’t leave others out of your conversation.”
Rosewell was standing closer than Harlan was comfortable with.
“Yes, sorry Miss Rosewell, I guess all that soul training made me sensitive to people contacting mine.
I could speak words into Relly’s soul instead of her just picking up my words, I don’t know what the language of signals is though, I could only speak the words she sent me.”
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Rosewell put on a bright smile for Relly to try and hide her severe annoyance that the first thing he did was try and research Relly.
“Harlan… I think we should eat so you may speak of things other than research and testing.”
Eventually they sat on the blanket, Zella had handily won the tree climbing race using her hair to pull herself up, she ignored Reet’s comments about cheating and unfair advantages.
Zella hugged Harlan when she came down.
Things had been tense since Ky left, she needed someone who was more mature than Reet to talk to.
“We thought something bad had really happened this time. Rosewell told us it was fine. But…”
Zella finally thought about how much she should be saying in front of her.
“It’s been completely fine, I’ve never slept on a better bed, and I get around the clock protection.”
“HA, what could you need protection from? I was already out of the room but I heard you knocked a guy twice your size pretty good.”
Reet suddenly felt Rosewell’s eye burrowing into the back of his head,
“Don’t worry about it, it’s just in case, nothing bad has happened.”
Harlan had already decided to lie to them as soon as he survived his first attack.
“But enough about me, I see you aren’t wearing a hat anymore?”
“Yep, if I can keep it under control for another week without any help then I will be put on a 1 month wait time, if I get through that then I can go home. My mom will love it, easiest way to light a fire in the entire north I bet and with what they learned you might see a few more hotheads some day.”
Zella shuddered at the thought of more people like Reet.
“Then it will just be me and Zella left.” Relly held her legs tight to her chest.
“I won’t be leaving any time soon I think, don’t worry too much. And you can still make new friends.”
Harlan admired how easy it was for her to brush off her problems with just a couple of nice words.
They spent the rest of the day until dusk doing the things a normal child should do, they played hide and seek, tag, tested their aim by throwing things at tree branches.
Relly was nearly silent because of her curse and she used it to great effect in hide and seek.
Harlan hadn’t felt so normal in months, since he found out he wasn’t really human, and yet the thought no longer bothered him.
“I think it is time that we head back now, you will all be training to make up for this little outing.”
Harlan had a fire in his eyes, it was nice to unwind, but he still wanted to find answers to every new question he asked.
“You will be forced on more breaks if you cannot find when it’s right to rest on your own, this is your only warning. Now, I will help Safira to open a gate back to the facility and then one to the castle.”
Rosewell was the first to notice things weren’t right, she was a very talented wind and sound mage.
A branch changed air currents by breaking, but there was no one there, someone was invisible.
They were also far too competent to be anything but an assassin, they used subtle winds to make it seem like it was flowing unimpeded.
They hid their sounds and let others through.
She didn’t immediately attack, instead making code signs with her hands while pretending to open the gate.
Then she felt a larger, less subtle change in the air, an arrow headed towards Harlan.
She made a twisting gale force, the arrow was reduced to splinters and the would be assassin into chunks no larger than her fist.
Then the rest dropped their cloaks.
6 assassins left. She unsheathed her weapon from what seemed like just a hilt, an elegant thing, a rapier with many gems throughout its guard. Each one allowing bursts of air in different directions to make her swordsmanship more unpredictable and attack from impossible angles.
Safira held off 3 more shots by shifting the gravity into itself.
At that point it became a matter of close range combat.
Safira was excited, she hadn’t had the chance to fight in far too long, sparring just didn’t have the same feeling.
Her mace was comically large to normal soldiers with its 30 pound head.
It was a 4 pointed star shape with and a spiked tip.
After the first strike nearly broke the grip of the assassin the second was accelerated and the head was now effectively over 200 pounds, shattering not only the blade but also collapsing the body of the would be killer.
She grabbed the legs of the assassin and swung the body like a weapon as she dodged strikes, shifting its gravity towards the one she hit with it to get them away for a moment.
She threw her mace to hit through the first one she killed and deal with the second.
The third thought there was an opening as Safira’s back was turned and her neck exposed.
Unfortunately Safira wasn’t just a master of gravity, but earth as well.
She kicked her foot back not unlike a bull ready for a charge and spikes erupted from the earth to skewer the poor soul.
They were never even close to harming the royal guard.
Meanwhile her mace met its mark and the assassin along with the tree it struck fell, she recalled it back to her hand by reversing the last gravity spell she used on it.
Rosewell was barely holding back 2 of them but she had an advantage.
Her sword was a prototype that replaced the mana gems imbued with spells with the blade itself being able to cast these spells on command.
Her rapier let off blasts of air that let her shift her attacks to impossible angles, it wasn’t flashy like Safira but the few attacks that got through the assassin guard cut vital muscles and she took advantage of their shock to kill them without much issue.
Hostin meanwhile was not a tenth of the fighter that Safira or Rosewell were.
He was barely holding on only because the assassin kept being hit by a headache induced by Relly.
The final slip up was Harlan opening a small hole as the assassin stepped down and Hostin taking advantage of this.
Harlan had twisted his own ankle more than once on gopher holes.
Then the bodies exploded, Safira chose to guard Rosewell, meanwhile the body next to the children exploded while Hostin was at the wrong angle to block it for them.
Harlan using nearly every drop of mana he had to make a gale to counteract the explosion, they were still tossed back a distance, Zella wrapping herself and Relly in hair to break their fall, Harlan was too far to grab, his own spell knocking him backwards.
Reet was lucky to have missed a tree and instead just rolled on the ground, broken limbs instead of a broken skull.
Harlan was not so lucky, the last thing he heard was yelling, the last thing he saw was the edges of the gate stabilize into a location he didn’t recognize.
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Coronach watched, he was disappointed he couldn’t join the killing but he had to admit he liked the big woman.