Harlan brought dinner to Adina and Isha, explained that Kass was gone, and then they all sat and talked for a long while.

In the morning he decided that he needed to be at the academy for the first time since Haldren.

He sat for breakfast and found that his friend group had shrunk, but he wasn’t shocked, ever since he set foot inside the building he could feel an oppressive fear weighing down on him.

Ximena was the only one who was waiting there. Harlan almost wanted to cry on the spot, but he was just about done with that, he just felt a tiredness come over him.

“I guess everyone else left me for what I did.”

“No, they are just running a little late. I don’t know how things are going to go once they get there though.”

“Ximena, honestly, what do you think?”

She set down her silverware.

“People are probably going to hate you, and then in a decade everyone is just going to remember it as a tragedy. Sepul destroyed cities, he didn’t do it by accident, and now he is hated by beastkin, but otherwise people don’t seem to care.”

“But what about you?”

“It was a magical accident, you meant to attack people who had it coming, and something happened that killed other people. What you did is your fault, but I don’t blame you, you realized that justice wasn’t going to happen because he was someone with a title.”

She resumed eating, not wanting to speak more until the others arrived.

Claude arrived and gave Ximena a kiss.

Claudia and Yara sat on either side of the couple so neither of them had to face Harlan directly.

“Just tell me honestly what you think.”

Claude was the first to answer.

“My parents want us to stay away from you. They are worried we might get caught up in an assassination attempt. And I did hate you at first, but we’ve all talked with Ximena, and I see things her way.

It was a terrible accident, but I am not going to end my friendship with you over it.”

He pointed at his sister, who clearly didn’t want to answer.

“I don’t want to be around you, I came today because I didn’t realize you would be back yet.”

“That’s fine, I know I’m a poison now, everyone who stays friendly with me is going to suffer for it in some way.”

She left without another word, she was not someone who was lacking in other friends.

Harlan hated it, but he knew Yara’s answer before she said a word.

“Yara.”

“How is Liat?”

“She is working for Balor as a personal guard, not for defending him specifically, just for whatever he needs.”

“Thank you for helping her… My parents said that if I keep interacting with you, they are going to force me back home. I’m sorry, but I can’t stay around you.”

“I don’t blame you.”

She left after both of them shared a long stare, she wanted to stay, to take Harlan’s offer that he hadn’t even said yet, but she didn’t plan to leave her people like her sister.

“Where’s Zella?”

“She is on a mission. But I talked with her, and she understands.”

“How have things been for you?”

“People already avoided me, I don’t care what they say, so it hasn’t bothered me.”

“You know, I never asked, but why did you end up as an outcast? You are pretty, you aren’t exactly outgoing but you aren’t overly shy, you aren’t stupid, but you never threw being smart in peoples faces that I can tell even though they have it coming sometimes.”

“How many friend groups do you see that have any Golden in them? Not many, because everyones that in four years we will never see one another. Then you have to deal with how shit most of our people are and how they might reject you for being together with ‘weaker people.’ I tried to be friends with everyone, and trying to be friends with Reinoans made Ragnites upset, and when I tried to be friends with beastkin I was out of place and there is some weird shit between our people that everyone seems to know but nobody wants to explain and… I’m ranting. People are shitty, I didn’t want to play their games, and I ended up disliked by a bunch of people. Do you remember when we first met?”

“You mean those times that you got mad at me because you thought that I was patronizing you? Or that you saw past what I was and the rumors you heard? Or when I completely forgot that you and I were in classes with one another?”

“I might’ve also been a bit combative and my fellow Golden didn’t like that very much since I’m ‘just a healer’ from White Sands.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but if all of that led you to me, then maybe it isn’t so bad.”

“I won’t, because I’m glad to be friends with you.”

Harlan stealthily wiped away a few tears with water magic.

“Thank you.”

They had a quiet breakfast, then when they departed, they had quiet classes.

Harlan’s threats had worked, if before people avoided him because they were personally fearful of what might happen, now they avoided him because their parents told them in no uncertain words to never so much as glance in his direction or the direction of anyone he knew.

When the day was through Harlan’s, three of them, all worked together to get all of the backlogged classwork finished as soon as possible.

Then he got an unexpected visitor at his dorm room.

“You are Harlan Fomoria?”

“Yes.”

They all answered.

Each of them took a subtly defensive stance, which did not go unnoticed by the man.

“My name is Walter Holister. My daughter is Elise Holister.”

The Harlan’s began moving papers off of the couches and chairs.

“Please, sit.”

“Thank you.”

As he poured them both hot water for tea the pot clattered against the lid due to his shaking.

“You seem upset, do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I’m alright I just… ”

Tears ran from his eyes, but did not his tone had not changed.

“You don’t-”

“I know, but I am not going to explain why I am crying. Are you here because of me and Elise?”

“She doesn’t know that I am here.”

“Does Sepul?”

“No, and I don’t see why he should.”

“Because he is Elise’s great great grandfather.”

“That isn’t relevant, he is the cause of most of her trouble, just like with Eliza. He wants her to learn magic but he is so wrapped up in his own things that he hasn’t given her the lessons on responsibility.”

“So you know that he is also my great great grandfather then?”

“Of course, but I know that he didn’t raise you and from what my people have found out-”

“Thank you for admitting that.”

“What?”

“Sepul denied that he was my grandfather and tricked me. Now I know the truth.”

“Don’t tell him that I told you.”

“I won’t. I don’t mean this to be rude, but why are you here?”

He stared down at his cup, swirling it so the clear water was muddled by the tea that was still seeping.

“Did you know your Eliza at all?”

“Give me a moment.”

Dawn hadn’t stopped freaking out since she saw his face, he was older, so she needed a second glance, but now she had no idea how to handle seeing him. She felt guilty about Elise, but Walter was someone who she abandoned even though he tried his hardest to make things work between them.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Shit, FUCK, I don’t know, give me time to think.”

“Alright.”

“Tell him. NO, DON’T TELL HIM.”

From the outside Walter could see Harlan’s eyes flashing so rapidly from soulspeak that they almost turned pure white. He had no idea what was happening, but he felt it was something bad.

“Don’t listen to anything I say, but I want to speak with him.”

“Is that a good idea? What if he reveals that you are here?”

“Who would even give a shit now? Sepul? Elise? He’d be ecstatic, she will hate me either way because I left her behind.”

“Eliza did that, not you. I know you are upset seeing him, you don’t want to mess things up more than they are, and you are blaming yourself. But we already had this conversation more than once, you are not Eliza, you are Dawn, you know that she fucked up, and you are doing what you can to fix it.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“Walter, I have someone who wants to talk to you, please, give me your hand.”

He hesitated for a moment, but grabbed Harlan’s hand anyway.

Two hours passed, Harlan moved from this body to another and continued his work so he didn’t end up overhearing what they talked about. But he glanced over every now and then, Walter had cried, he had been angry, he laughed, he went through a lot, but he got some closure.

He let go of her.

“Thank you. Eli- Dawn, told me everything. I’m sorry I came in here to pry information from you using her.

I… I blamed Sepul, but some of her bad habits are my fault, and I shouldn’t push that on anyone else.

I also need to talk with Sheron and Cecil. We've been watching you, and we haven’t even known why, we just couldn’t trust you.”

“Do you know if Shelly has mentioned me since…”

“You should speak with David.”

“Alright. And, thank you.”

“No, thank you.”

“I’m not doing a back and forth here. Dawn has been worried over some things, you are one of them, and she has been worried about Sheron since we had our first argument with her. Smoothing things over with her will be a weight off my mind. So accept that I am saying thank you, and go.”

“This took longer than I expected, and I’m sorry to leave but-”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m just really happy that things worked out better with you than with Sheron.”

When the door was closed Harlan let a sigh and laid back on the couch.

“Harlan, I want a body now. I want to-”

“Alright.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know why you would be surprised. But, I do need to ask. Do you want your original appearance?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because I don’t want people thinking I can bring back the dead. Even if I explained what really happened, it is so insane that I wouldn’t believe it.”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“Alright, what should I be then?”

“...”

“Is it what I think it is?”

“There is nobody else I can think of who could fake it like you.”

“That sounds like an insane idea.”

“But the fact that you know what it is without me saying it means it could work.”

“Why don’t you say it then?”

“I want to bring you back as a Half-Fomorian and pretend that you are my sister or cousin or something.”

“And how are you planning to make that sound sane?”

“The Darkness is a trickster and a manipulator. I’ll say that you were the back up, but you didn’t develop Fomorian abilities, you only gained the ability to leave the landlock curse. So I got the champion role and she kept you around for reasons that she won’t tell me about, much like her not telling me that you were alive until my family all but abandoned me and I lost my friends over what I did.”

“Gods… when did you think that up?”

“I had a dream where you and I sat across from one another and you finally met Adina in a real body.”

“So you saw this ahead of time?”

“Maybe, or maybe that dream was bullshit.”

“How long is this going to take?”

“I have all of the materials I need to make a body that has the appearance and strength of a Fomorian.

I’d say less than a week.”

“And are you ok with me leaving you.”

“Not at all, I’m terrified that as soon as you can do what you want without me you’ll either go back to being Eliza and ruin your life again or you’ll finally realize I’m a monster and leave me alone like my family has.”

“You know I won’t do that.”

“Doesn’t matter, believing, doing, and knowing are connected, but they are not the same.”

By morning, Harlan went through over a week's worth of classwork.

Breakfast went better than the day before since he didn’t need to have the weight of losing friends.

And Zella was back.

“I don’t want to talk about it, I forgive you.”

“Good. What was the mission?”

“It doesn’t matter. I want to talk with you, let’s go to the gate office right now and you can take me to the most remote location you can think of.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so. Now, let’s go before I lose my nerve.”

They were in a forest contained on a large mesa in the frontier, they were over 100 miles from even the nearest ranger outpost. Harlan would sometimes just use gate and fly around to clear his head, and this was one of the locations that he marked as worth remembering.

Zella had been pacing back and forth for a handful of minutes before Harlan pulled her down to sit next to him in the shade of a tree.

The colors were changing, it was a good spot to pretend the rest of the world wasn’t so shitty.

“Hey, I want to know if you are going to forgive me.”

“For what?”

“I killed my mother. That is how they found me and sent me to the facility.”

“What happened?”

“That’s why I love you, you just assume that it wasn’t my fault or that there is a reason I did it.”

“When you say-”

“Yes, I mean that I love you. I didn’t when we were younger, we’ve got a year and a half between us, and that felt wrong, but now I’ve seen you grow up and I regret not getting to you before Adina. But that isn’t what I want to talk about, and I’ve got Reet now, so I’m happy.”

“So, what happened?”

“My mother didn’t want a daughter, she wanted a doll. And I didn’t have a father who stuck around because she worked at a brothel. Money was a problem because she had to take care of me and she didn’t want to send me to an orphanage… When I was 8, a Fae who was passing by heard my mother complain about the tangles in my hair, so I got hair that was always long and beautiful, but it was also alive. So I became a sideshow, the men and women would pay to touch my hair or just to see it, and so my mother began to treat me more and more as a thing instead of a person.”

She brought her knees to chest.

“Then when I was 11…”

“You don’t need to say it, I-”

Harlan heard the tree behind them creek as her hair wrapped around it and squeezed.

“The owner said I should start doing real work, bring in more money by letting people do more than touch my hair. I didn’t understand it, but she did, and she let it happen. I don’t remember it very much, but I killed a dozen people, I saw my mother’s body twisted out of shape.”

She went around to the tree to vomit.

“You can stop.”

“The kingdom was watching me, they knew I was cursed but until something happened or they thought I was worth bringing in they just watched. They saved me.”

She went quiet as she sat back down.

“I’m sorry.”

“Gods, Harlan, I’m telling you, I know how it feels when you fuck up and people you didn’t mean to die do.”

“You were just defending yourself.”

“Bullshit, you do preemptive defense all the time. I killed the first man and that wasn’t a problem, but then my hair dragged me out to the lobby and started attacking anything that it could. That’s why I was so pissed about the riot, I thought that I was going to kill everyone again.”

“Did you bring me here to guilt trip me? To force me to forgive myself by forgiving you?”

“Fine.”

Zella stood up, fully equipt her golem armor, braided her hair into half a dozen powerful arms, and tossed Harlan through a tree.

He got up without a scratch and she hit him with another hair haymaker that sent him spiraling across the ground and into a large rock.

Loud popping could be heard as he put his limbs back in their sockets.

She dropped down from above and Harlan flipped the gravity to trip her up enough that he could grab her arm and return the favor.

Instead of going through the tree, she coiled and hardened her hair like a spring to cushion the impact.

She shot back like a bullet and clipped Harlan, taking off most of his forearm.

He calmly reached down and put the piece back on himself and pulled the blood back inside.

“Alright, what the hell is this?”

“You want to beat yourself up and lash out at me, well I want to beat you up for lashing out at me when I told you my darkest fucking secret.”

She got close and Harlan didn’t fight back as she slammed him to the ground over and over again or as his limbs flew off when she aligned the spearheads hidden in her hair to be an effective sword.

Eventually one of the slams cracked his skull open and made her realize the punishment she was putting him through might be more than he could take.

But then his armor slipped off, put him back together, and he was on his feet after another five minutes.

“Are you done?”

“Are you? Accept that you fucked up, and people died, and that is just the way things are.”

“I didn’t fuck up, I took a risk. I was ready to kill thousands of soldiers and I justified it by saying that they were evil because they followed that man’s orders. But I did it because I’m a monster and I keep accepting that over and over again and then I cross another line and another and another.”

Harlan fell to his knees and pounded the earth with enough force to shake the trees.

“Put me down.”

Their fight called in something else.

The wyvern swooped down, Harlan rammed its head with his body and was heavy enough to put it off kilter and Zella avoided its jaws.

Wyverns were smart, old ones were very smart.

Yet when Harlan explained who he was, it was not smart enough to back off.

The creature was nearly 80 feet long, its wingspan was over 140.

The blue light gray and blue bottom and green top meant that it was a Sky Wyvern variant.

From below it would be hard to see, and for anything bigger than it above the clouds it would blend into the grass and trees. Though for something old enough to reach this size, there was no longer anything that it’s pride would allow it to hide from.

“Zella, do you want to flee?”

“And miss the chance to kill a Greater Sky Wyvern?”

The beast roared at the insult and lightning crackled between its teeth.

Harlan knew what the clicking thunderous clicking meant.

“BREATH ATTACK. GET TO ME.”

The breath of a dragonoid was gas on the way up, then once it was ignited it passed through a magical effect innate to the creature which elementally transformed it.

He knew that it wasn’t natural lightning, so lightning rods wouldn't actually stop it and there was no shield he could put up in time that would stop it from punching through, there was no hole deep enough that the energy wouldn’t spread down and fry the both of them.

He made it a policy to always keep a gate at the ready, holding on to such a low cost spell was easy, and casting it took no words or movements.

The pair dropped from above, Harlan held her hand and used soulspeak to silently explain his plan.

As soon as they hit the air they split up, the wings were a weak point and Sky Wyverns who spent their lives in the clouds were generally more fragile but far faster than other variants.

The pair tried to put holes in its wings and prevent it from turning into a long range exchange or a flying battle, both of which would put them at a great disadvantage.

Yet the speed of Sky Wyverns was not just something that was said, it was undeniable.

The creature spun its long neck around and bit at Harlan who only half spiraled the warspell that he now had to redirect towards its face. Yet the void spell simply splashed against the scales without a scratch, Harlan heard that they were powerful, but hadn’t expected this.

He barely got away by dropping his hover and using gravity magic to fall as quickly as he could.

Harlan looked to Zella to check on her but she turned her hair into wings and was fast enough to stay in its blindspots, and with its size there was a limit to how far it could twist its body before it hit against itself.

“Stop running little fleas.”

“Fuck off, you overgrown newt.”

For most the idea of insulting such a beast would insanity, but Harlan knew that the danger of most things was when they were smart, and fury fought intelligence, especially in the mind of a cursed creature such as these when their pride was stung.

It focused its full attention at Harlan and that gave time for Zella to prepare something bigger.

Her classes were combat and war magic just as Amber was, and along with that was dimensional and time magic. It was a somewhat odd set of classes, people who learned time magic rarely did so to fight and the same could be said of dimensional mages whose vocation was rare enough that they almost always ended up with cushy work taking people too and fro instead of fighting.

Harlan lamented his lack of weapon once again as he rushed towards the beast.

He formed blades of solid void along with an extra four arms to attack with as he skirted against the beast. Yet the blades, while physical and made of one of the most destructive elements, just broke apart against its scales.

Harlan thought long and hard as he avoided the snapping jaws and waited for Zella to finish her attack, he heard plenty of stories from Sepul and he tried to remember what he said about Sky Wyverns.

He kept hammering against the beast while only avoiding its jaws or breath by an hair, but after the beating he took from Zella he was already tired and he didn’t know what Zella was doing, but he would buy her as much time as it took.

“HARLAN, NOW.”

“NOW WHAT?”

Harlan barely had time to use skip and get out of the way when a massive beam of searing radiance struck the Wyvern. Sepul hadn’t just told Harlan his stories, they were part of a published novel, so she had already read some of the stories. Unfortunately, instead of the spiral warspell drilling a hole through the neck of the wyvern it chipped away a segment of the scales. She was just over 18, and was on her last year of academy, when Sepul started killing wyverns he was 24, a champion, and had been taught to use magic and the unique powers of a champion by his god personally.

Harlan was too far away to hear her say shit as she dropped from the sky, she had also been a little tired from the earlier fight and warmagic was a sprint, not a marathon, if she got one good hit that was supposed to be enough.

The wyvern howled in pain and turned its sights to the small figure that was now falling, her hair was alive and tryings its best to break her fall, but it wouldn’t matter if the lightning breath hit her.

Harlan was about to use gate to grab her when he had another idea, and he made a judgment call based on one of Sepul’s stories.

He heard the loud clicking of the tonsil stones that were the size of boulders and the wyvern entered a hover.

When he saw the first spark leave its mouth he opened a gate in front of it and then another near the area where Zella stripped its scales.

But the gate was too small, the breath would hit the area he needed, but the rest would get past and Zella would die.

He tried and tried, time seemed to slow as he saw the bolts cut through the sky.

Then he remembered, the gate was desire, he was telling the world that he wanted to go somewhere, now he must demand that it grow in size.

So he demanded that it did, and the mana responded.

Much like the young wyvern he killed in the frontier, once the neck was pierced during a breath attack it backfired. For the Ice Wyvern, it ended up dead and encased in ice, for a Sky Wyvern however, the result was an explosion that took its head neck off.

Harlan used skip to grab Zella before she hit the ground and protect her from the cloud of dust that was coming at them from the crater where the body now lay.

After 30 minutes and a tonic she was awake again.

“Oh… you are awake…”

“You sound like shit.”

“...should see the other guy…”

“You killed it.”

Harlan made a fist and banged it against her chest.

“We killed it… Now pull the cast out of my chest pocket and pull out a tonic.”

It was small, 6 inches long, an inch deep, but inside it was a 2x2 cube.

“You really figured out how to make these things work.”

They both drank and then didn’t speak for five minutes.

“I figure I should admit, Marigold made you two hair things, I stole the silver one and used it to learn.”

“Yeah, she told me.”

“She knew?”

“She said it was a test.”

“I should apologize.”

“Yeah, you should.”

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Would you kill me?”

“Now? No.”

“I meant were you going to do it when I asked before.”

She pulled her knees to her chest.

“I wouldn’t be able to get back if I did.”

“I’m serious.”

“I thought about it. But no I wouldn’t do it. You made a mistake, you’ve got an eternity to make up for it.

I just hope in a thousand years that you remember me and the fun we had together.”

“Do you have anything else that you need help with?”

“Ha, yeah, that makes sense, you save my life again and then you just want to keep helping with dumb bullshit. You know what, Parnell tried to get handsy with me after giving me a few drinks.

And when I told him about Reet he said that I should get some experience and he would thank me.”

“He tried to pull the same shit with me. Not getting handsy, but that I should visit a brothel before I get married.”

“What a fucking prick.”

“Yeah, I’ll go deal with that when we get back.”

“So, how are we splitting the wyvern? Something like that is worth a lot of money.”

“I’ll butcher it, no cost, then split the materials 50/50.”

“60/40.”

“Alright, you get 60.”

“You killed it.”

“Yeah, but I used the mark left by your spell to do it. If I was by myself I would’ve been shit out of luck.”

“50/50.”

“Deal.”

Harlan walked down the halls of the academy, the wyvern’s body was being stored in his lab on the grounds, and he hadn’t gotten the chance to clean up since he needed to be somewhere at a specific time.

David and Parnell were both coming out of combat magic classes.

“Hey, Parnell.”

“Harlan? What-”

A headbutt broke Parnells nose and David swung at Harlan who grabbed him by the wrist and forced him to the ground.

“Parnell got Zella tipsy and then tried to cross a line. I’ve overlooked the way he treats women before because it never happened in my sight, but if he doesn’t watch himself, I’m going to break his nose again.”

Harlan let him go and pat him on the back.

Harlan whistled as he walked away, he felt a great weight off of his shoulders now that he had almost died again and saved her life, he actually felt pretty great.