Harlan found himself on a hill overlooking a town not quite big enough to be a city.

From its walls that seemed higher than reasonable for such a place, white flags and banners hung.

“I am going to observe you, nothing more. Do what you please.”

“Why?”

“Because you want to give up on violence. I will not accept that, and you won’t either.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone right now.”

“We will see how long that lasts.”

Harlan sat on the hill for some time until he saw a wagon train full of caged people he did not know.

Their skin was a pale blue, their ears were pointed and they had small nubs where he could tell horns of some kind had been cut. But their features were sharp, almost Fomorian, and their figures lithe.

They were filthy, unhealed cuts festered, fresh brands could be seen upon their skin.

Harlan walked near the cage and a guard thought to shove him away, but upon seeing the quality of his clothes, decided to change his approach.

“If you wish to see the merchandise you would be better served waiting for the auction where they will be cleaned.”

“Are they criminals?”

“Who are you?”

“Harlan Fomoria.”

“I don’t know your name. What kingdom are you from?”

“Ragne.”

“I do not know that kingdom. Are you traveling?”

“Yes. I’m very far from home.”

“After the fall of Elfique, we are taking them to be sold into slavery.”

“Why are they in such terrible condition then, why the brands and untreated wounds?”

“You must’ve lived a very sheltered life to not know of the brands. They keep them in line, and mark them as slaves until the day that they die.”

“So they are a conquered people, they’ve no debts, and they have committed no crimes?”

“They are Dague, is that not crime enough?”

“I’ve never seen a Dague.”

“Then you are luckier than most.”

“But these Dague, they have committed no crimes?”

“If you don’t intend to buy them, then fuck off, we’re almost at the gate.”

Harlan felt the minds of them, they were women, young boys and girls, but no men.

Most looked so broken down that they sat completely still, but one girl, she reached out to him.

He didn’t know how to tell the ages of these people, but if she was a day over 20, he would be shocked.

“Please, help my people.”

The guard swung his baton, breaking her arm at the elbow.

“You’ll get another brand for that one. One more and it's off to the tests for you.”

The mention of these tests was enough to force the women silent despite the tears that fell from the pain.

“I understand now.”

“I said if you aren’t going to-”

Harlan struck the guard, but when his helmet was knocked off, he saw that the man was seemingly made entirely of metal, so instead of losing his head, he simply staggered back.

“Get this little shit.”

Harlan hadn’t thought much of his height, but he realized that the races around him, lizards and Dague and whatever this metal man was, were on average six and a half feet tall or more, the average height for humans was five and a half.

He thought for a moment about that, so far as he knew there were no reptile beastkin.

The metal man put away the small baton and instead got out a large club off his back.

It was Harlan’s style, heavy as can be, studded, but made of a faintly magical metal that Harlan didn’t recognize.

Harlan deflected the blow with his hands, and once in his grip, he yanked it from the hand of the guard.

The other rushed in once it was clear that their companion was not going to handle this so easily.

Harlan grabbed the metal man by the wrist and threw him to give him enough space to check the balance on his new weapon. Whatever that man was, he was not overly strong, even if he did seem to be very durable.

After flipping it around a few times Harlan swung at the first of the guards, turning his shield into little more than a cast of metal wrapped around his broken arm. Yet he had survived and backed off.

“The hell is he?”

“Those features, Half-Dague?”

“Not even full Dague are so strong. And look, his skin is pale, but the tint is wrong.”

“Doesn't matter. Who the hell would dare attack a Cast in this place? And why?”

“To steal the slaves?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

Harlan moved over to unhook the cart from whatever the things were that carried it forward.

It had been forced to a stop by his empathy overcoming whatever training it had. No orders from the driver nor cracking of the whip would move it forward.

The metal man had dug himself out of the dirt and rushed forward, with him around, the others felt confident enough to help again.

Then Harlan spoke.

“I don’t want to kill you, I want to understand why these people are being treated like objects.”

He took the hand of the woman who had asked for help and healed her arm.

“HE’S A MAGE.”

One of the men called out, and the others backed away.

“Is that supposed to be impressive?”

Harlan moved his hands and the men nearly fled from fright.

When he pointed his fingers, they hid behind their shields and the metal man scoffed.

“Where are your identification papers? If you intend to steal these slaves I’ll have you reported to your superiors.”

Harlan cocked his head to the side.

“What papers and what superiors? And you cannot steal people, you kidnap them. I will not do either of these things.”

The color drained from the faces of the men, even the metal one seemed shocked by the response.

Harlan didn’t understand until he heard these words whispered, unregistered mage.

Even then, he didn’t understand the scope of what it meant, but he knew that they thought it was something bad.

The metal man steeled himself, he knew what he had to do, letting one of them go was a very bad idea, the rewards for them were just too high.

He resumed his rush forward, but he was slow on top of being weak compared to Harlan, his durability really was his only redeeming factor.

Even that seemed to falter as Harlan brought down the mace on his head.

First he was dazed and confused, but only received a small dent.

Then as the blows kept landing more and more dents piled up, then his skin broke, and the red liquid that was not truly blood spilled out. Many of the men finally fled.

“I said, I didn’t want to kill anyone. What are you?”

The metal man spit and gurgled blood before answering.

“The Castian Empire will not forgive this.”

“So you are Cast? Or part of a Caste system?”

The Dague woman spoke up.

“They are the Cast, monsters of metal born from wizards and witches. Get me out of this cage, and I can explain much more. You are clearly not from here, you need me. But first, kill him. He is a beast, he said he enjoyed when us squishies broke when he…”

Harlan bashed the head of the Cast until metallic brain matter was spread around.

The Town guards saw all of this but were waiting for reinforcements before they dared move in against a man who used only physical strength to kill a Cast.

He used this time to grab hold of the bars and pull them apart with some effort, but without imbibing.

Next he used some metal shaping magic to break her restraints, but when he tried to do the same to another of the slaves, they fought back.

“NO NO NO NO, I CAN’T REMOVE THE CHAINS, MASTER DOES NOT LIKE IT, I’VE ALREADY TWO BRANDS, I CAN’T HANDLE THE TESTING.”

Harlan was dejected, not even his empathy could overcome the fear that became master of their minds.

“I would be more merciful to simply kill those who cannot become free.”

“I’m not going to do that, I will find a way to help them, or at least try my hardest.”

“What a naive way of thinking. You’ll only hurt them more, broken cannot unbreak, unless you can remove the memories, heal their scars, they are broken.”

Harlan’s eyes went black, but he retained some awareness of the outside world. What he learned from controlling two bodies applied even when he returned to a singular entity.

“What am I doing here?”

“My child. What are you doing there?”

“I don’t know. I feel like if I take one more step forward, I’ll never come back, out here nobody knows me, I’m accountable only to myself.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Then let yourself be judge, jury, and executioner. This is what you wish to hear, so I’ve said it.”

“But what about everyone back home. I can’t just leave them alone.”

“You’ve not to worry for. You never left.”

“I’m I in some grand illusion? Is my mind fractured and is this a delusion to make myself feel better?”

“That little touch of foulness still existed in you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you never left, the other body cut off from you, is now a full being.”

“Shit, I can’t let him-”

“He is an exact copy of you. Can you trust yourself for the duration of this campaign?”

“Of course I can’t, I’m me.”

“Would you truly leave such cruelty unpunished, would you turn your eyes from this suffering?”

Harlan was somewhere else, the inside of his mind was not his living room, it had turned to a battlefield.

He recognized the metal man dragging a woman into a tent.

What he saw, as the woman couldn’t bring herself to describe, filled him with murderous fury.

“This is your choice, it is out of my hands what you do. Oh, and what that man did, was perfectly legal in many countries and under the flag of many empires.”

When Harlan awoke he returned to the body and tore it to shreds, he pounded his fists into the corpse until it was nothing but silvery red paste.

He grew in size, replaced his hands with claws, his head became like that of a wolf, and every inch of him was covered in his golem armor, it had to be thinned out, but it was worth the extra defense.

He walked backward down the line of wagons and with both arms outstretched he cut the top and bottom of each bar, even a light push made them fall to the ground.

For the hundred carts, two hundred stepped out and cowered behind him.

The people had arrived, men with shiny badges showing a book on it.

The man in front looked to be in his 50s, he was thin and balding, he didn’t seem intimidated, nor did he seem to care about Harlan.

“Are you the unregistered mage known as Harlan Fomoria?”

He adjusted his throat to speak with human tone rather than a growling speech.

“Would you stand behind the treatment of these people in this way?”

“That is not our concern. Every mage must be registered, from what we can gather, you don’t know local customs, and you don’t seem to even know about us. Where did you receive your training?”

“The grand academy.”

“There are various academies with that name.”

“In Ragne.”

“And where is that?”

“Past the veil.”

The man’s companions burst out in laughter, but the older man was unamused.

“If you cannot answer seriously, I will be forced to take you in for a proper interrogation.”

“Do I sound as if I am joking? And do you think it could take me in?”

The man recognized at that moment that if Harlan didn’t know about the order of magic, he wasn’t going to be afraid of what would happen if he killed him.

“Where is your country located?”

“I could show you memories.”

“And how do you intend to do that?”

“Soul magic of course.”

“Xerrath, go verify.”

“Why me?”

“You can be replaced more easily.”

“But I don’t know how to protect myself from soul attacks.”

“And who does?”

“I can.”

Harlan said with a grin on his face.

“Xerrath, go now or your understudying days will be very short.”

“Come boy, I’ve no intent to harm unless you stand in my way.”

He looked to be human, 5’4, 15 or younger, red hair and freckles.

Harlan showed him images of the grand academy and of the crest of Ragne, various things that might prove the existence of what he says.

“Sir… I think he is telling the truth.”

The boy was shivering in fear and his companions didn’t look much better. Along with images from Ragne, he also showed what he was capable of.

“To cross the veil…”

“I am the champion of darkness. Now that we have that out of the way, I’ve much better things to do.”

The old man replied with shaky words.

“Of course.”

They fled with such haste that the commander of the reinforcements from the town itself didn’t get the chance to ask why.

The Dague cackled madly.

“What is your name?”

“I am Mercedes. With your help, my people will be free.”

She grabbed his hands and placed them on her face.

“Please, help us.”

“I dislike people who try to manipulate me. I can read you, and you want my power, but your goals aren’t mine. Why?”

“Sir, I have no idea what you mean, you’re scaring me.”

“I’ll show you how scary I can be if you continue to lie to me. What are you hiding?”

He removed her hands from his face.

“Sir, you’re hurting me.”

The town guard, backed up by bits and pieces of mercenary armies who followed the various leaders who planned to purchase slaves, arrived.

“I expect answers when I return.”

With the wagons on his right, Harlan circled left so any stray shots wouldn’t endanger the comatose people.

“Beast, you are to be brought in for questioning.”

“I’ve a single question for you, are you truly alright with a man defiling a woman to the point he kills her?”

When Harlan was done explaining what he had been shown by his god, a number of the men looked green, but most were unfazed.

The captain responded.

“What a master does with his property is not my concern.”

“ANY WHO SET DOWN THEIR ARMS SHALL BE SPARED.”

Harlan roared out his warning.

Far fewer spells than Harlan expected were fired upon him, the shock of the men earlier about him being a mage made a little more sense. Not a single soldier from Ragne or Reino lacked the ability to use veils or cast elemental magic. With their magical metal being something unable to focus mana like the magical metals that he knew, they could do very little. He could take a number of attacks and then just grab a dead body to subsume, sometimes a living one would do as well. He took on the traits of these people, metallic scales grew under his fur.

Many of these attacks didn’t even harm him, their weapons too dull and light to get past his armor and then his natural defenses.

Just as he was about to swipe a young man, he dropped his weapon, so Harlan redirected his attack to kill another.

Harlan bit and clawed his way through hundreds. Their formation to protect the mages meant that no large spell could be used against him without killing dozens of their own men, and Harlan’s lack of showing any signs of real damage or fatigue meant that the normal soldiers were little better than a meatshield.

So they began opening fire on their own men, and when that didn’t work, they tried to flee.

But Harlan despised people like that, who without asking, would sacrifice their own comrades in some attempt to win.

He leapt into the sky, his teeth sunk into the flesh of the flying lizard man and tore it from his shoulders.

Harlan landed on a bed of spears, but none of them hit his brain, so he flexed to shatter the wooden hafts and continued the slaughter.

More and more, people just dropped their weapons.

Eventually there was one man, the captain of the town guard.

Harlan walked to the shaky man who was covered in blood and viscera from his allies.

He took his own life rather than go back to tell his bosses that he failed.

Harlan walked on the knuckles of his four arms like some kind of gorilla, and as he got closer to the town gate, his form became more human, though he did keep an extra set of arms.

Over 600 men had died, over 1000 were spared.

He made his way through the streets, throwing out void spells that cut the chains of the slaves, telling them that they were free now, and daring anyone to stop him.

Those who did had their head crushed on the nearest solid object.

When he made his way to what he could only assume was the mayor's home, he looked at the arrays and scoffed. Even the chief of Luth had better defenses.

All of his hands and Dawn worked together, unraveling them before they stepped inside.

Every bit of magic that he had seen thus far in this place was disappointing. He needed to look into what this entire mage registration issue was, as it was the most likely culprit for magic being so simple.

He walked to what he was guessing was the mayor's room, as it was the most heavily guarded area thus far.

He heard the sounds of yells and squelching. Then his door opened, blood flowing through the open door.

“You must have a lot of slaves, don’t you?”

The mayor put on a strong face, clearly the man had been a figure of respect and authority for long enough that he was deluded into thinking he mattered to someone like Harlan.

“As is my right in this grand empire.”

“And if I spoke to them, would they speak highly of you as a fair man?”

“They godsdamned better or I’ll have their heads.”

Harlan cut the head from the mayor and put it on the statue of himself in the courtyard.

He walked back to the battlefield, some men mourned the dead, others just looted.

The free Dague hadn’t moved inside the city, nor had they fled.

“Those of you who have surrendered, you are free to leave, or you may join me. Dague, those of you who wish to join me, make a pile of bodies, strip the dead of their equipment, but if another of their band lays claim to their items, give them up.”

Mercedes walked up to Harlan.

“What about the bastards of this town who would’ve bought us as toys, do you intend to just let them get away with this?”

“I am here to set something right. I am not here to kill anyone who might’ve been a monster in the past.

I will hold trials for each and every member of the town, those who have slaves must face them in court, if they have done wrong by them, death is the likely outcome. Destroying a culture is not a small task, but it is one that I am going to set myself upon.”

“These soldiers, you know that they must’ve-”

“I AM OFFERING PARDONS TO ANY MAN WHO TAKES UP MY BANNER, BUT YOU WILL BE REMEMBERED, YOUR CRIMES SHALL NOT BE OVERLOOKED A SECOND TIME. YOUR FIRST DUTY WILL BE TO PROTECT THESE DAGUE UNTIL MY RETURN.”

A great deal of the soldiers picked up their arms again, and whether it was because they were just too afraid to say no, or they did actually want a clean slate, they took up defensive positions around the Dague.

Mercedes, deciding that she was important, tagged along with Harlan.

Harlan went to the slave quarters of the former mayor’s home and began healing the people, but found that the brand never came off, it rejected all of his attempts at healing.

Mercedes spoke up when she noticed how hard he seemed to be focusing.

“The brand is magic, something invented by a grand wizard. It cannot be healed.”

“We will see about that. Miss, would you be willing to follow me to another room?”

She was some kind of beastkin he didn’t know the name of. Her scales were smooth and small giving her an almost snake like appearance, but if he had to guess, she was mixed with some species of amphibian, skinks perhaps. She was also probably the tallest person he had met, but she kept her thin body slightly coiled to remain under 13 feet tall.

“Of course, master.”

“I’m not your master, I’ve killed your master.”

“That makes you my new master.”

“You have no master.”

It was hard to read beastkin faces, but from her twitching and using his empathy, she was deeply confused.

“Who is my master?”

“You have no master.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If you don’t want to come to another room with me, you don’t need to.”

“I’m not sure I understand, who is my master now?”

“You are your own master.”

That seemed to get through to her, she had been born a slave, and never knew a life without a master, but being her own master could be understood.

“Why should I go to another room?”

“Because I might be able to get the brand off of you.”

“Alright.”

They moved to a storage room of some sort, Harlan took note of how large everything seemed to be built here.

“Are you human?”

“No.”

“I’ve never met a human before.”

“Are they rare out here?”

“I don’t know.”

“You probably weren’t taught much, were you?”

“I do not need to know history to clean.”

“I’m going to cover your eyes, my magic can be painful to look at, is that alright with you?”

“Yes. I think so.”

Harlan felt bad about it, but he draped a sheet over her head because cloth didn’t stay on her smooth head very well.

It took only a few minutes, but with the sigils painted using color magic he could remove the brand.

“Oh, it’s gone. Thank you.”

She didn’t seem to realize how important it was, but she was grateful.

“You’re welcome. Do you know where the vault is here?”

“Yes. He always made me clean without clothing so I couldn’t hide coins.”

“Will you take me there?”

“Of course.”

They used a hidden wall to find a set of stairs down to the room.

“You can’t go inside though. The door is locked.”

“I’ll see about that.”

“It is a living door, it can’t be easily tricked.”

Harlan could feel the mind, and was amazed and disgusted. He assumed the worst, that they had killed somebody to use their soul for this.

It spoke in a deep voice.

“My master is dead. I cannot open for anyone without approval from his masters.”

Harlan felt how simple the mind was, so he used empathy, it was like making an animal do something.

The doors slid open and Harlan saw what he needed, neatly organized boxes of mana gems.