Harlan had one thing which he did enjoy about the former mayor’s home, it had bathrooms, and it had a bathing room with a pool able to fit over a dozen people without an uncomfortable closeness to them.

Every time Harlan used it instead of having the workers draw the water and build a fire and run the cycler to keep it hot and clean, he just used magic.

15 minutes into his soak, an uninvited guest arrived.

“Joan, what are you doing up so late and why are you here?”

“I came for a bath, and I think you won’t make me leave.”

“Because we’ve already said we aren’t looking for that relationship in one another?”

“Because I am going to be open with you, and I didn’t want to do that with Mercedes around.”

“And she is often stuck close and you don’t want to outright tell her to let you have a private conversation with me. Alright, enter.”

She removed her clothes and entered the bath while Harlan looked away. He tracked her movement with his mental senses and magic in the steam that rose from the waters.

“In Dague, bathhouses were common, and for a people whose culture was based around deception, they were a sacred place. They were somewhere that you could be completely open and defenseless without worrying about being stabbed in the back. In the army, every unit was expected to bathe together.

One sign of honor and trust, to show that you put your life in the hands of another is to let them wash their back and hair. If you don’t toss me to the street, I would like to wash your back.”

“What do you want to confess?”

“First, I would like you to wash my hair.”

Harlan moved over to her and grabbed the comb and soap from her hands without needing to face her by using telekinesis. He only turned around when her back faced him.

“I was not thrown out of the army for what happened between me and my captain. That was just enough for them to send me to the front line. And I was too scared of dying, so I ran, they caught me, and I was in prison, waiting for my execution date.”

“Why tell me half the story?”

“I was worried that you would be upset, so I told a half-truth, and then you praised me for being so honest and I… I didn’t know what to expect, even with what you’ve done, I’ve also seen you fight like a monster.”

“You came to me because you felt guilt over lying to me, and that shows character, just like before. Do you mind if I ask something sensitive? Or at least I believe it is, but I’ve been too afraid to ask.”

“I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.”

“I don’t like asking things that intentionally upset other people without reason.”

She laughed.

“I didn’t expect to see a more childish side to you. Go, ask your question.”

“Every Dague I’ve seen has had their horns cut, I thought at first it was because you were enslaved, but I’ve seen them polishing and trimming them.”

“And why do you think it would be upsetting to ask?”

“Because any time I’ve seen them doing it they stop and hide away, and when I speak with them and I start looking at the horns they get uncomfortable.”

“Our horns are tied with tradition, they are a sign of dominance, and only those of nobility are allowed to keep them long.”

“Would you like to grow your horns?”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“I disagree, but before we continue, I’ve finished washing your hair.”

Harlan turned around and sat on a stool so she could repay the favor..

“Please, wash my back.”

She hesitated, but she grabbed the soap from his hand.

“I would like you to consider growing out your horns to show your position as well as your trust in me. Eventually it should spread as a sign of a Dague loyal to me instead of a dead country.”

“What you said earlier, that you would make this a place where I would be proud to live, was that really the truth?”

“I want to be a place that people can be free, that people will come to for the hope of a better life, and I want to give them that better life. I hope that is what you want.”

“When this war is over, I can see myself finally starting a family here in this place. That is the trust I am placing in you. And I want you to know that I fled before not just because I was afraid of death, I simply didn’t believe in the kingdom like I did when I joined. It was no longer a place I would sacrifice myself for.”

She opened her mouth again, but no words came out.

“Whatever you want to say, speak freely.”

“You once mentioned to me that you have a girl waiting for you back home.”

Harlan’s shoulders slumped and she could feel his tension.

“I am here outside of the veil for a mistake I made, and I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye.”

Joan hugged him from behind.

“I hope you aren’t trying to do anything here. I don’t want to be comforted in that way.”

“My apologies for doing something untoward. We are a bit more open with skinship than most. I meant nothing more than a kind gesture.”

“I will try to keep that in mind, but I dislike people touching me like that.”

“Since we are here, would you like to say anything else? How did you learn to wash hair so nicely?”

“When I was younger, we didn’t have a large tub, and it was a pain to heat the water, so I bathed with my sisters, and I helped them wash their hair. My fiance- no, Adina, she learned cleaning magic, and then she taught me. So I’ve just used those together.”

“Are you close to them?”

From behind she could see the corners of his mouth rise.

The pair spent hours speaking to one another, Harlan felt a weight lift off his shoulders to have somebody else who he could just talk to.

Eventually when Joan started to look like a prune they agreed to go to sleep.

Morning came too quickly, either he had nightmares, or he had dreams that he only half-remembered and might’ve been prophetic or completely meaningless.

He laid on his side, gripping his pillow in front of himself like it were a person.

“Good morning.”

He didn’t reply.

“Harlan, are you awake?”

“I’m fine. I’ll get up in another few minutes.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Let me sit, just for a few minutes.”

“I wanted to say this before, but it wasn’t the right time. I want to be put in a body, I think I can help you better as a person, and out here, nobody will know or care about who I was.”

“Alright, just a few minutes.”

She didn’t say anything more, it was clear he wasn’t even paying attention.

Almost an hour passed before Mercedes entered his room to wake him.

“Harlan, do you intend to sleep in today?”

“Just a few more minutes.”

She sat at the edge of his bed.

“It will help nobody, least of all yourself, if you sit in bed. Did something happen last night?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Alright then, just a few minutes. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Having been called by Mercedes after 15 minutes passed, Joan dragged herself into the room, her clothes had been sloppily put on and her hair hadn’t been brushed yet.

“Harlan, you gotta wake up.”

“You look like shit.”

“I’m sorry that I did something to upset you last night.”

“You didn’t do anything. I just remembered that my family is gone, I gave up my love, and I don’t have friends here.”

She sighed.

“You really are a child.”

Joan pulled the blankets off of him and opened the curtains.

“Do you want to brush my hair for me?”

She sat back on the edge of the bed and handed him a brush she found in the nightstand.

He was on his knees on the bed and didn’t say a word..

Once he had brushed it he started to braid her hair into a short braid that couldn’t be easily pulled on in a fight.

“Do you want to talk about it now? Or should we get into the bath again?”

“I’m sorry that I said you weren’t a friend.”

“I don’t mind, we barely know one another.”

Harlan began to cry onto her clothes, causing her to turn around and stroke his hair.

“Shhh… it’s alright.”

“I miss them.”

“I can stay here with you today if you’d like.”

He sniffled and wiped away his tears, but his head was still buried in her chest.

“If you ever need to let something out, use me as you want.”

She suddenly realized how it sounded.

“Ah, I mean… No, you know what I mean, you are a bright kid.”

Harlan chuckled and wiped his tears away, but this time they stopped.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“I’m fine, I’m alright. Xol was right to send me here.”

She smiled gently at him.

“Good, I’d hate to think everything we said to one another last night was causing you harm.”

“First, I need a weapon.”

“What about that club you carry around?”

“I don’t think it is good enough. I’m going to take a half day, send food to the basement and have it placed outside of my converted workshop. If anything happens, come get me.”

“Should I have the servants get metal from the vault?”

“No, that won’t be needed.”

Harlan sat in the room drawing plans, he would rather not need to do this more than once.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“I’ve thought about it for a little while, my bones are from a Stone Drake and that makes them like an organic stonesteel. My healing can regenerate my body, so I have as much material as I need provided I have food to sustain myself.“

Harlan took deep breaths to prepare for what he was going to do.

He grabbed a dagger from the table and coated it in void so it could actually hurt him and he made a long incision on his thigh.

Then came the worst part, he jammed the blade inside at his joints and screamed in pain, the wards and arrays strained under the effort of stopping his voice from escaping.

After 10 minutes there sat a bloody femur on the ground and Harlan was shoveling food in his mouth to offset the cost of healing that only got higher and higher as he replaced his natural body with stronger parts.

“Now we can talk. I’m sorry, I didn’t really process what you said earlier.”

“Gods, what is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how much it hurts me to see you mutilate yourself like that?”

“I had a dream where I tore out my own spine and used it as a spear to kill a dragon.”

“What if that was nothing but a dream? You didn’t need to do any of this.”

“This felt right.”

“NO, NO IT DID NOT. YOU CUT OUT YOUR FEMUR.”

Harlan took a deep breath to calm himself as he felt his wound stitched closed and a hardness formed in his leg.

“I feel like shit, but it’s like a haze has lifted and things are clearer. This weapon will be mine, and once I have a weapon, I will feel calmer. I feel naked when I don’t have armor on, no matter if I’ve got clothes or not, and I feel defenseless without a weapon, even if I mostly resort to my fists. Do you know the feeling?”

“Harlan, I don’t want to encourage you, but yes. She had a dagger, something that her parents set aside for her when she got older and one day Sepul gave it to her. It had her initials on it, E.D. Then the Fomorians took it from her and she never saw it again. Probably got melted down and turned into something else.”

He finished eating and laid down perfectly still so the bone would form properly.

“Do you want to look like yourself? Or should I try to make you a new body?”

“I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t even know if I want to be human, and the Dague…”

“They are beautiful.”

“They remind me of you. Their features are sharper than most people, but they are much softer than a Fomorian. Your human side is pulling its weight to prevent you from looking strange.”

“I should find out what their horns look like, I don’t know if they curve or what.”

“I think something that is just a step away from human will make me feel better, and if we do end up back home someday then I don’t want to look like myself. But I don’t want to be blue like them, I like my pink skin.”

“Alright.”

Harlan awoke from his nap a few hours later and stomped his leg a few times. The new bone was unpleasant, but he knew the feeling would fade after a little while. The most important part was that it didn’t feel any weaker than before.

He picked up the bone that was inside of him only a matter of hours ago, and the feeling struck him. It really was insane what he did, but that dream of his seemed to compel him to do it, and now that he actually did it, he wasn’t sure what to feel. So like he so often did, he pushed away that feeling and went to work.

He etched sigils on the surface of it and then used flesh shaping to move them deeper inside of the bone as he turned it into something that actually looked like a sword.

But it too felt wrong, he felt it from the sword, it didn’t want to be what it was.

So he used the bone that was the hilt and extended the blade, leaving a weapon that was also a danger to its wielder.

He had heard many swordsmen tell him that a blade was a part of the wielder, like an extra limb.

But as he swung the simple bone white sword that looked like any other broadsword minus a hilt, he felt it.

This was not a blade, it was him, both physically and mentally, it was something linked directly to him.

“Put it away, and don’t get it out again until I am out of your head, it makes me feel sick, it’s… it’s banging against my mind.”

Harlan put it back on the table and he could feel the relief from Dawn, but he could also feel the blade calling to be picked back up and used.

“I’m not sure you should even use it once I’m gone. Fuck, just put it somewhere we don’t need to look at it.”

Harlan encased the sword in stone and put sigils of his own making on it to block the mental signal that was calling out to him.

“Do you think I should tell someone? I didn’t put anything on that blade that should’ve let it use mental magic, but it…”

“That thing was literally made with your blood sweat and tears, no wonder it turned out like that.”

“I’ll find a new weapon that I feel safe with another time then.”

Harlan looked at all of the weapons in the vault and even went to the guards to just get a feeling for the weapons they used, but they all felt wrong. So he would stick with the club that he got from the first Cast he killed for now.

He thought about calling Xol, seeing if he had time to look at the sword, but he decided against it.

There was no reason to bother him with it, besides, it was buried under his home, it was perfectly safe, nobody else needed to know about it.

At evening time, Harlan was eating his dinner when Mercedes stepped inside his office.

He barely left the room, most of his work was done by hopping into the golems.

“Perfect timing, I need to keep my mind busy for a little while.”

“Oh? Is there something else bothering you?”

“Nothing to concern yourself with. I am considering making a public bathhouse, but to keep things sanitary would require either setting up a bunch of pumps and filters and all of that, or just assigning a few golems to keep the water clean and hot. What are your thoughts?”

Harlan saw her brighten up out of some genuine happiness rather than greed.

“The bath here is nice, but a Dague bathhouse is a community square of sorts where everyone can gather to speak freely and without worry. It would do a lot to brighten the spirits of the people if you made one.”

Then her eyes dulled a bit as she thought as his advisor instead of as a citizen.

“But… do we really have the time to make something like that?”

“I saw how excited you became, and I can make it work. Also, I will be hiring an extra advisor soon, please ensure that a room next to mine is ready for her.”

“Where did you find her?”

“I won’t answer that question. But back to the topic at hand, the bathhouse golems.”

“In Dague, we had slimes that constantly moved through the water and acted as filters.

They made little brown pearls out of the dirt in their cores that could be easily removed and thrown away.”

“Huh, I’ve only seen slimes as test subjects for healing classes.”

Harlan furrowed his brows.

“Wait, slimes? How long have they been around here? Because I recall something about them being an artificial creature that was invented where I am from. And I know we’ve been cut off since… I actually don’t know the answer to that, not everyone even knows that there is a world outside of the veil.”

“I don’t know the history of them, slimes have always just been something we’ve used.”

“That doesn’t…”

Harlan contacted Xol.

He arrived a minute later while the pair was still drawing up plans for a bathhouse, Harlan never thought he would actually appear so quickly, most of the time he didn’t answer at all.

Mercedes jumped back seeing the lich.

“The Dread Pirate…”

“No, you are thinking of Dun’Kel. Harlan, what do you need? And have you been adjusting well here?”

“Slimes, where do they come from? Because I heard they were an invented creature, and so they shouldn’t be out here as the same creature.”

Xol was hard to read due to his current lack of a face, but Harlan had the feeling that he didn’t like the question.

“Ah… yes, well, you see… Woman, leave us.”

She did not need to be told twice.

Once the door was closed he put up veils.

“Slimes were invented by me. Such creatures were very common in stories which I read, so I played god with them and died. Then I came back outside of the veil and tried again, the ones out here are honestly some of my better work and they do exactly what I want them to.”

“Can you show me how? I want them as cleaners.”

He pulled a notepad and a pen from his sleeve and began scribbling.

“You know, I made pens too. Back where I am from they were standard, here you people were using ink and quills still and I got annoyed by having to write everything like that.”

Once he was done there were only a few pages of densely worded instructions.

“Vaporize those once you are done, people can make slimes already out here clearly, but that is a set of advanced instructions to really let you do what you want with them.”

“Thank you.”

“So, my wife wanted to know, how are you really doing?”

“I broke down in the arms of my head of defense this morning. But I think I’m doing better now.”

Harlan started tapping his foot, he was anxious.

“This is the part where you ask me how Adina is doing, and I tell you that everything is fine back home.”

“Gods, thank you. I didn’t want to ask.”

“You can’t worry about her, because by what you’ve done, you are now free to start a life out here.”

“I-”

“Wait, let me explain further. I was told to tell you that you don’t need to try jumping into love again, give it a few years, just until you are a little more mature, and then find someone. You aren’t built to be alone, but the start of a war is a terrible time to think about falling in love, even if you can’t control it, at least hold off putting a target on the back of some woman.”

“I wish she was here to tell me herself.”

“Well you are stuck with me because she is trying to prevent the other you from… nevermind.”

“From what?”

“How do you think you would react if you had no way to lie about what happened to Haldren?”

“I’d force a situation where I couldn’t really be punished too harshly. Probably by making an army and showing off my seeming immortality. Then I’d probably bring out Dearil and show that what happened really was a terrible accident and pin as much blame as I could on him.”

Xol looked a bit incredulous.

“I know that you and him are the same person, but I still find it odd how you came to the exact same conclusion even after being separated for weeks now. Is there anything else that you need?”

Harlan’s mind drifted to the blade, but he kept quiet about it, that blade was his and his alone.

“Do you know anything about the elemental sealing array that they are going to have around their cities?”

“My wife wasn’t out here setting up anything, these people won’t have anything nearly so sophisticated.

You’ll also find that they wouldn’t use them anyway since they heavily restrict who is allowed to be a mage by their long standing lie that people believe to be true.”

“Yes, I already discovered that lie and I’ve told the truth to my advisor and my head of defense.”

“I’d keep that secret for a long while, and you should make a fake ritual to keep them in line.

Is there anything else that you need?”

Once more his mind went to the blade, and-

“Just show me the item.”

“What item?”

“Don’t play dumb. Two of you already exist, that thing feels like another. Whatever you made earlier, it is dangerous and I need to make sure you are safe.”

“How sweet.”

“Don’t get touchy feely just yet.”

Harlan went down to the basement alongside Xol, showing him around the house a little long the way and waving hello to the staff who all froze the moment they saw him.

Once down inside of the safe room turned workshop Harlan pulled the stone box from the wall.

The moment Xol cracked open the stone and the sigils turned off, he could feel it.

“What on Aarde have you done?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to take this thing, run some tests, and if it is safe, I’ll give it back when the time is right.

Do you hear it singing in dual tones?”

“No, it just… makes me feel things.”

Xol locked it back and stone and used his own sigils to completely remove the voice.

“Do you feel better now?”

Harlan gripped his head.

“Shit, that hurt.”

“But do you feel better?”

“Yes, I think so. I thought that I got away from it.”

“Your sigil crafting is still very rudimentary. And I’m a little shocked that you have the mental fortitude to get it locked away at all. I’m sure it is Dawn’s presence that prevented it from working properly, or perhaps it is the partial fusion of your mind and soul when you became a champion.”

“It was hard, I wanted to use it.”

“It is good that you didn’t. That thing is cursed, in the Fomorian sense at least. It would ask you to kill someone, and then it would keep wearing you down until you did it and you wouldn’t want to throw it away or break it because you would feel connected to the weapon. Why did you make this thing anyway?”

“I don’t feel safe without a weapon that I like being around, and I had a dream where a spear made from my spine killed a dragon.”

“I’ll see if I can’t find something for you, but don’t make another one of these. The body of a champion is fundamentally changed, even if you don’t always notice it, and that being used to manufacture a weapon like that is bad news.”

“Thank you.”

He vanished back to his small world and Harlan decided to go out and hunt for some animals that he could use to build Dawn’s body.

Mercedes would work on the bathhouse design on her own that night.

----------------------------------------

There were few test subjects who Xol could use, so he called Coronach who picked up the blade without issue and left shortly afterwards.

The shadow stood on a hill and watched the sun rise, unsure how to handle the things he felt stirring his cold and dead heart to life.

Eventually, the feelings faded when the moon was at its peak.