Harlan informed Dawn that he was going to be leaving, but that what he was doing wasn’t something they should worry about interrupting.
“So what are you actually doing?”
“I’m going to train my sigilwork.”
“Do you need me to-”
“Dawn… Mom…”
Harlan tapped his fingers on his desk.
“Find a reason to throw a festival. I’ll explain why someday, but for now just do as I ask.”
“Does this have to do with why you were being strange that day? Sleeping on the roof.”
“Yes.”
“Then I won’t ask questions.”
“Thank you. And if you could, find out what kind of pet Darrath wants.”
“I will do that.”
“Oh, and make sure that Mercedes gets the dinner with Carmilla scheduled and Darrath gets some lessons on manners, since I’m not sure what other guests might be there to meet us.”
“Alright. Anything else?”
“No. I’m going to pack some tonics and then go.”
Dawn hugged him.
“I hope you feel better about whatever it is.”
“Thank you.”
Harlan stepped through the gate and then another and another until he found some place where so far as he could tell there were no people or much life in general.
The land gave off a sickly feeling that made Harlan mournful.
He sat down on a mesa, bringing back memories of warmagic classes.
He could almost hear Sepul telling the other students to be more efficient with their casting or that they needed to stop making the biggest explosion they could as a dick measuring contest or he’d do something.
He never once explained what the something was, but the mentioning of genitals and Sepul being mysterious and ancient meant nobody wanted to find out.
Harlan shook off his nostalgia and began moving his hands.
He started with the beam that the Finger used.
Whereas Sholl caused concentrated heat and then an explosion, his beam was a line of darkness that simply erased things, yet he knew from experience that it wasn’t so simple.
When he had clashed with Sholl his beam did not erase the other, instead they both deflected off of the other, shifting their path.
As it hit the stone it cleaved cleanly through, but Harlan felt it was wrong.
For however powerful it might be against some rocks and trees, there should be an auxiliary effect according to what he had been told.
He tried again, subtly shifting the movement of his finger every time.
But unlike with a rune, he couldn’t feel the wrongness when he made a mistake, either it got better or not, but he had to rely entirely on what he could see, and with it cutting stone as if it wasn’t there from the start, it was hard to see a difference.
After an hour Harlan was tired, so he drank a tonic and laid on his back, watching the birds circle overhead.
The silence was deafening, and he didn’t like being stuck with his thoughts.
According to that parallel mind, he had spent that month with Harlan’s grief, taking all of it on himself, and that it wasn’t enough.
He had also spent that month thinking on the subjects of the rust virus and using mass empathy to control his people.
While he had decided that mass empathy was unethical for a few reasons, not limited to how altering the minds of ones citizens over a long term was likely to cause many negative side effects much like the trauma Dawn suffered, it would also risk his people not voicing real problems that they had and things would just fester.
But then there was the subject of the virus, a way to potentially kill off large numbers of Cast and weaken the empire as a whole.
According to himself, it made perfect sense, the Cast showed a blatant disregard for life in all of its forms and any sort of moral decency.
Harlan knew that the Cast were not born evil, but made that way intentionally, and that gave him pause, but he had also been told that they killed those who showed good natures before they left their reproductive area, and thus it was unlikely for there to be innocents caught up in the biological weapon.
He dwelled on these thoughts until he felt ready to begin casting again.
Harlan decided that he need a better way to test the sigils.
So he started to fire the beams straight down and then figure out their depth with divination.
If it got deeper, Harlan assumed that he was doing it right.
Yet another hour passed and he had made no progress at all.
Each and every time the beam hit 500 feet on the dot, 2 inches in diameter, he even began double checking each hole to make sure he wasn’t getting a bad reading.
So once again he rested, laying in the middle of the holes and running his fingers along their edges just to have something else he could focus on.
But it didn’t last long.
He had refused to let it hit him, but Redmond was gone.
Even if it was unlikely for him to have gone back home, to have ever seen him again anyway, it didn’t stop that burning sick feeling in his gut and that gnawing at the back of his mind.
He kept trying to figure out the beam and if it was lacking an extra effect or if the effect was something that he just hadn’t realized.
Harlan was laying there on the ground, thinking instead of doing, looking at the buzzards overhead who wondered when he would be dying.
Before he even realized what he was doing he cast that beam once again, aiming at the birds.
He felt a sudden regret as the beam neared them, these birds had done nothing and he had no reason to attack them.
Yet while the birds had begun to panic, they were unharmed.
Harlan was confused, and gated above the birds to grab the one he hit.
It squawked and squalled as he grabbed it but calmed down quickly in the way birds did.
He remembered butchering chickens when he was younger, once one had a chicken upside down they would stop resisting after a short time.
So he held that buzzard, far larger up close than it seemed afar, and checked it for any harm, but it was fine.
So Harlan used his empathy, asking it to stand still for him to test again.
He fired the beam, and it passed through, turning stone into nothingness, but leaving the buzzard as it was.
It lifted its wings up, looking baffled as much as a creature with a simple mind could.
Harlan fired it once again, this time intending to harm the bird, and it dropped dead, a two inch hole where its heart was.
He made a small apology for taking its life and buried it in the stone so the other buzzards wouldn’t eat its body.
Now that he understood what the beam could do, he moved onto the sigil that for Sholl made a blade, and for him made a black mist that had a few hard chunks inside.
Harlan understood from his beam what the likely use for the mist was.
He made another buzzard come down and perch on a seemingly dead tree and then cast the sigil.
After a few breaths the bird fell from the tree, Harlan would’ve assumed it dead, but its mind was still there.
The oddity was when he saw it under soulsight.
When the buzzard rose from the sand and stone, it had grown.
Sharp beak and claws, deathly caws.
Harlan called the creature over and admired the shimmer of it.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The deep darkness of it was cut by the shine of light that was rejected and reflected.
But as he held it in his hands he felt the heat buried in its chest that just wouldn’t go away.
Harlan sent it away.
When it was nearly out of sight Harlan saw it struggle to keep flying and then fall from the sky.
Before it hit the ground Harlan saw it catch fire.
When he reached the spot where the buzzard hit the ground only a few of its larger bones were left, but the black chunks which had attached to its claws were returned to mist and then faded from existence.
Harlan poked at the bones and blackened sand, but the magic was gone.
His mind had flowed away from his current troubles, now there was something that piqued his interest.
Harlan went to the tree and unleashed the mist again, but nothing happened.
So he placed his hand on the tree and confirmed that it was living, but from a species which had the appearance of being dried out.
He opened a gate some ways away and found water, which he brought back and put his mist in to see if it would take.
The chunks sunk in the water and the mist made a film on the top as if it was oil, but it refused to bind itself to the liquid.
He moved on with the experiment anyway, forcing the tree to absorb the water.
After well over ten minutes Harlan gave up, it would not affect the plant.
So he went off to find another animal to use the mist on.
Went closer to home and searched the forests, finding a fox first, but Harlan thought foxes were cute and he felt bad about using it as a test subject, so he put it back down and found something uglier.
In a nearby stream he found a catfish, and moved it to a small pond he dug out.
The mist still wouldn’t mix into the water, but catfish weren’t picky eaters and it swallowed one of the black chunks.
As it passed through the gut of the fish it quickly darkened in color and unlike any catfish Harlan knew of it grew overlapping bone plates.
It had grown in size from two and a half feet to four feet and when Harlan lifted it he estimated it to be 70 or more pounds, abnormally heavy for its size.
Just as the buzzard had, its body heated slowly at first, but in less than 10 minutes the water of the small pond began to steam, yet the fish seemed to not feel any discomfort either from the heat outside or in.
After another few minutes the water began to boil and the fish died, but at no point was there pain, and unlike the buzzard, the water meant that the body had been preserved instead of burning up.
Harlan cut into the fish, finding it cooked completely, and the longer it was dead the more he saw the magic fade away, the bone plates had fallen off and then were blown away in the wind when they rose to the surface of the water.
What was odd was how the darkness had grown inside of it, leaving gaps in the flesh as he examined it.
Harlan had an idea of what the obvious next step was, and that was him.
But what worried him was how it changed the soul of the things that breathed in or otherwise ingested the substances the spell made.
He returned to Falin and spoke with the minister in charge.
“How may I help, King Fomoria?”
“I’d like to find a test subject, meaning someone who has committed a violent crime and is unrepentant,
murders first, then rapists. Do we have one?”
The woman narrowed her eyes and contacted Carmilla, having no wait before she answered.
“Your majesty, I am here with King Fomoria. He is requesting a prisoner for experimentation and I don’t know what to tell him.”
“King Fomoria, why do you need them and will they survive?”
“I’m using sigils, and it is very unlikely.”
“What kind do you want?”
“Unrepentant, murders preferably, then rapists. The only reason I can imagine we don’t have any to spare is if they’re being killed immediately instead of put on an execution list.”
“Very well. Liyana, contact the other ministers and see if they have someone who matches what he wants if there are none in your territory.”
“I shall do as you command.”
When the minster hung up she set the amulet back in its drawer.
“Why not wear it?”
“These are a precious gift from you as well as our only means of real time communication across the nation.”
Harlan pulled a spare amulet from his pocket.
“Take another for personal use if you’d like, or otherwise just to have a spare.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Do you think it’s a bribe?”
“They are valuable and I have no desire to be in debt.”
“No debt, and they are only as valuable as the materials I made it from. The one for my head advisor has bone and sinew for holding it instead of metal, and it works no differently because it just needs a large enough gem.”
He saw the woman notably cringe.
“I didn’t expect a vampire to be so squeamish.”
“I don’t like blood either.”
Harlan had to keep himself from laughing.
“It isn’t funny.”
“Apologies for laughing, but I really did need this.”
Harlan made a chair out of void and sat down, resting his head on his hand, giving off a menacing appearance to the woman as the wisps of black rose from his seat.
She contacted the other ministers while he stared at her, making her nervous.
“Is there anything else I can help you with? Shall I call for a cup of tea or a sandwich for you?”
“You have a nice name.”
“Thank you.”
She called another minister, avoiding conversation with Harlan.
Yet once she was gone he spoke again.
“How did you get this position?”
“My queen interviewed me and decided that I was well suited to handle this city.”
“You mean to handle me.”
“What?”
“Carmilla plays games with people. We’ve not spoken since I took over, but you are the minister she picked for this city, so I assume there is a reason.”
“I do not know the queen well, I first met her when she sired me, and then again when I was interviewed.”
“She personally turned you?”
“She sired all of us.”
Harlan tapped on his chin.
He knew that there was a benefit to turning a vampire, but they were all very cagey about what exactly it was. Perhaps it gave them some manner of control? Perhaps there was a way to kill sired vampires?
Either way he knew that the Nightwatchers disliked it when someone sired a large number of vampires and if one requested that their spouse be turned it was considered poor form for them to be the one to do so.
As he had been staring she continued to make the calls until they found one.
“Female, 25, attacked the minister of Walten and then attempted to take her own life, an apparent nationalist who refused to even live under a ruler not from Drang-”
“Not a murderer, just a dissident.”
“She also killed her three children beforehand.”
Liyana flinched when his eyes turned to slits and the fire in them flared.
“Thank you for your time, I will pick her up in just a moment unless there is anything you need from me.”
“Take the amulet back.”
Before he could refuse she threw it at him.
“Another time then.”
Harlan gated to Walten and went to see the minister who then directed him to the jail after giving a letter saying he would be taking the woman for execution outside of the city.
“I’d like to make sure that you intend to kill this woman.”
“I cannot abide by child murderers, so rest assured that she will not be freed from anything but this mortal coil.”
Harlan went back to that dead place and bound the woman with stone hands, her body outstretched.
He took the gag off of her and put out the mist.
As she screamed things he didn’t care to hear she breathed it in.
Her eyes went black first, then it spread and her skin cracked.
She grew very little in height or width, but he could see her muscles bulge on void interlaced with them.
Her nails and teeth turned to claws and fangs, her antlers spiraled out in a random pattern, one piercing her skin.
She strained against the restraints and shattered the stone before rushing at Harlan.
Yet though he could feel her anger and hate, she was incapable of striking at him, every slash missed him as her body fought against the new flesh and bone which took hold of her.
After some time, nearly an hour by his count, she collapsed to the ground and seized as she sweat from every pore.
It looked to be excruciating, but he could tell her mind went to sleep some time ago and she felt nothing even as her flesh bubbled and blistered until she caught fire.
Harlan watched her burn and then examined the bones, and unsurprisingly the power which was granted to her faded away just as it had with the bird and the fish.
He disliked this power, while a simple creature might not understand what is happening and would just go with the flow, an intelligent creature was effectively trapped in a body that they no longer had control over.
But he couldn’t argue against the results, turning a malnourished woman into one able to shatter inches of stone which bound her.
Since he had discovered the power of these sigils in a day, he believed that there must be more to them, and he intended to use that week of time he had said he was going to take so he could find the limits and oddities of the spells.
He felt some excitement and joy like he hadn’t in some time. There was a new horizon for him, to use this new power he didn’t understand and then take it apart, just like he had with the sigils that he learned all that time ago.
And then the thought hit him.
He had been asked to kill that Evolved Skinwalker, and he used the sigils then, but at the time he had no idea what they were, and he had no idea that sigils reacted differently depending on the user.
Harlan wondered, did she know what his power would be? Was she aware that he would end up making that man and his thousands of souls into a crystal? And then the thought occurred, what was that crystal to be used for?
He put aside those thoughts, but he made certain not to forget them, as he had until now mostly forgotten about the man and the crystal.
----------------------------------------
Xol stood next to the boy and took notes while entirely hidden from all senses, everything was going well, and his wife would be happy to hear that he has been fine despite her being unable to have the chat he had mentioned to the boy.
He returned to their home and began making dinner for her.
“Do you need anything else?”
“The bedding needs changes again.”
He brought her to the bathroom and washed her before setting her on a freshly cleaned mattress.
“I’m sorry, I should’ve-”
“No, don’t worry about it. I’m supposed to be the one killing the wandering gods anyway, you’ve done more than your share.”
“Did you ever get an answer for why there are so many lately?”
“I’m not allowed to tell you, Aarde’s timescale is too long and he isn’t considering you an ally yet, just a useful traitor.”
“One would think 1800 years would be enough.”
“Yes, one would think.”
He placed his hand over the festering wound on her chest and after a few minutes it receded just a little, the effort on her part to be healed caused her to fall into a peaceful sleep again.
Xol sat there in his throne and used his arms of bone to look around the void for any more gods who needed to be put to final death.
As he did so, he saw it, and suddenly all of his plans needed to be accelerated.