In the morning, Colton knocked on Harlan’s door.

“Come in.”

“About what you asked.”

“It hasn’t been 24 hours.”

“I thought I’d find out some things that make it easier to say one or the other.”

Harlan put down the journal he was writing in.

“Alright, what do you need to know?”

“I’ve never really seen the empire, it’s just something that I know exists and I have been warned about. Before I became lord I was the marshall commander, it’s how I met my wife, and it’s why I get the respect I need for things to run smoothly. I’ve done a lot to help people, even if you don’t seem to think I do anything. But you are right that I don’t know the Cast, or how big the world is, or how brutal it really is, I’ve only ever been here in the territories and over to Redhaven.

I want you to show me whatever you think is going to convince me that you are the one with the strength to beat them and that I’m justified in letting you do whatever it takes to beat them.”

“Alright, do you need to do anything before we leave?”

“No no no, I think I’ll be fine to get in some walking and fighting.”

“I might get into a fight, but you won’t. I can’t have you dying before you sign over your lands.”

Colton wryly chuckled, Harlan’s tone was joking, but he believed him to be hiding the seriousness of his words.

Harlan gated him near to a Cast town on the same stripe as him, just a few hundred miles north.

He gave Colton his jacket, it was much colder here than back in the desert and the duster wasn’t enough..

“We are going to head into the slave market, and I’m going to ask the slavemaster some questions.

I believe that is all you will need to see.”

“What kind of-”

“Put up the hood, humans are a rarer species, and there is no telling if someone won’t try to take you for sale.”

“It doesn’t have a hood.”

He put his hands behind his back and checked for any folds of cloth, but Harlan just touched the shifting suit and it changed in design along with a heating feature being turned on.

“Now, onwards. I’ll do the talking, so don’t say a word when we get there.”

Colton nodded and walked behind Harlan, getting in line to enter the city.

Once they were inside it seemed nice, people laughed and walked in the clean streets while vendors yelled over one another claiming to have the best prices for meat and vegetables.

“This is an impressive city.”

“Have you ever seen a potato that seems fine from the outside, but inside is nothing but a void of rot?”

“You have a peculiar way with metaphors.”

“It grants me a certain flair that helps others to remember me and my words, and it hides my emotions.

But as I said, the city is rotten, you just can’t see it yet, in another few minutes we’ll reach the slave markets, and you’ll understand me.”

Oddly enough things became even cleaner as they reached the markets.

“Halt. Coin check.”

Harlan opened his pouch and the guard let him through.

Once they were out of earshot Colton spoke.

“What was that?”

“They don’t want window shoppers, if one wants to enter the markets they need to show that they have money and therefore intent to buy another person’s life.”

Harlan’s gaze turned harder the longer he was inside of the city, but now his illusions had failed and his eyes became the globes of fire and void that they were instead of the blue ones which he pretended to have, yet even these eyes barely gave others pause considering the odd people who existed.

The sound of flesh striking flesh could be heard not far from them and Harlan stopped in place.

Colton could barely see anything, all of the other races were taller than humans, and he wasn’t even particularly large at 5’8.

But he could see that Harlan was shaking in anger, trying to hold back from going to the source of the sound.

“We should go.”

Harlan knew he was going to turn things bloody if he didn’t keep moving, and there would be time for that later.

They made their way to the slavemaster’s office, where one could get information on who they currently had for sale and when the auctions would be starting.

Harlan put on the facade of a debonair man as he got to the frontdesk that was manned by a Faun woman.

“Excuse me, I’d like to know about pricing were I to bring in a few slaves, human females.”

“Of course. Ages?”

“9 and 50.”

“Wonderful. And is this theoretical or a serious question seeking?”

“Serious, but I don’t know if it’s worth the effort to bring them here or just keep them.”

“Why don’t you take a seat over there and once the slavemaster has free time he can give a better quote on them.”

“Of course, it does help to have a nice view when I wait.”

The woman blushed and went to check when Harlan could go back.

Colton whispered in Harlan’s ear.

“I hope this isn’t a way to get rid of me.”

“If I wanted you dead I’d just kill you, and I wouldn’t involve Phoebe or Anne. But you saw it, the way she didn’t even blink about the idea of buying a young girl. She’s excited about the idea of getting a new product. That’s all she sees your wife and daughter as.”

Harlan could feel the conflict in Colton’s mind, Harlan knew the man was more of a feeler than a thinker, and needed it to be seen before he could believe it.

It actually bothered him, like he was taking away some form of innocence from the old man.

When they got into the slavemaster’s office they spoke for 10 minutes with Harlan joking and asking questions.

Then he turned to Colton.

“Why do you think I can do this, put up with this man and his evil?”

“I really can’t get a good read on you.”

“It’s because now that I’ve shown you what these people are like, I’m going to kill him, and that thought has kept me able to hide my intentions.”

The Cast had been locked in place with telekinesis and a veil had been set up to prevent him from calling for a guard.

“Colton, now I think it’s time for you to return home.”

“And you?”

Harlan dropped his false kindness.

“I’m going to kill some people, quite a lot of them really, and I couldn’t guarantee your safety during my attack.”

“I’ll accept that risk, if I intend to uproot my nation, and have me and mine move to another, then I’ll need to know what a war looks like to a man who claims we’d just be rolled over by these monsters.”

“Very well, but step back and stay near your guardian.”

Harlan cast his void mist sigil and forced it down the man’s throat.

The metal man darkened and spikes of black grew over parts of his body like crystals as he started to thrash around when he overcame Harlan’s ability to keep him still with just telekinesis.

Then Harlan put his hand on the man’s head.

All he heard was ‘submit’ repeated dozens of times and his mind fractured as Harlan placed a mental vice grip on him.

When the Cast stood again his eyes were vacant and black as they linked to Harlan’s single black eye which was on his forehead and used for processing the sight of the mindbroken monster.

‘Protect’ Harlan said to him, and he got closer to Colton.

“What is this thing?”

“I’m not sure, I’m torn between Voidling and Thrall. But we don’t have time to waste, he’s going to meltdown in an hour or so by my estimations.”

Harlan turned into a form like that of a lion with long coarse hair and thick skin like a badger, and of course he kept his horns on him, he had gotten attached to them as a sign of sovereignty.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

When he stepped outside of the room there was a small confusion before panic set in, suddenly a large beast came out of the room where their boss was with a client.

Harlan calmly walked past the desk workers and pencil pushers, they might have been complicit in what was happening, but none of them were Cast, and he felt like he could be more merciful towards them.

Yet when the guards in the room pointed their spears at Harlan he skipped over and swatted them with his paws, and being on the second floor of the building, they went through the floor.

Harlan then crawled down these holes before turning off his hover, getting on his hind legs, and then slamming down, sending chunks of stone and splinters of wood along with gore across the room and inciting real panic as he then moved to the other Cast who had been knocked down and not yet recovered.

Once he got outside a great deal of magic was pointed at Harlan, but his tail was not just a tail, it was a bundle of arms which moved in a flurry to cast counter magic along with the mouths under his fur.

Colton was carried by his protector down to the ground floor where he saw the destruction that led right to Harlan, buildings had collapsed, halves of men were sent through different walls, spheres of void cut lines through the town and left only pieces of his enemies laying on the ground.

All of this happened in the 30 seconds between Harlan going downstairs, and Colton reaching the front door.

When he got closer to Harlan, he saw where he had been going.

The man who before had openly struck his slave to no reaction from those around him lay there on the ground, magical spells burst around them as Harlan sent bolts of elemental spells that prematurely activated and weakened the spells around him.

Harlan pressed down on the Minos’s chest and he died quickly, he then pulled the slave closer to him with his paw that after absorption was now nearly as large as the woman and opened a gate for her, softly asking her to go through.

Colton couldn’t hear any of this over the blasts of magic that were all around Harlan, he just saw Harlan kill a man and then push a woman through a gate.

With no one left in the immediate area to worry about protecting, Harlan continued to fight, skipping over to one Cast mage and pressing his paw on his chest while he used his teeth to tear him in half, eating the organic metal and giving an iron sheen to his fur.

With more defenses in place, now he stopped countering all spells, the process was quite a burden on his own mana, and now he only needed to worry about the larger spells he saw coming his way.

The small balls of fire did not burn him, nor did the ice bite his flesh with frosty aching, nor did the winds cut his fur as he ran forward, his thousands of pounds of flesh and metal turning him into a rolling stone which crashed through buildings and trampled soldiers while avoiding citizens as best he could, giving them time to flee.

When the Cast realized Harlan was only attacking soldiers and guards, they began using citizens as shields, but with the use of his sigil, Harlan cleanly cut holes through them without any harm befalling their hostages.

As they began to realize that this was much too far beyond what they could possibly handle, they began to flee the city to call for reinforcements.

Yet when they returned, the beast was gone, along with slaves and warehouses full of items.

In time, this would be known as a series of attacks with no clear source, a monster of unknown origin appearing from seemingly nowhere and casting magic that cut down trained soldiers like fodder while devouring bodies to become larger and harder to harm.

Colton returned to his country along with a few hundred slaves and Harlan, who spoke with a deep voice befitting his form.

“This is what I do, how I work, and why I do it.”

Harlan cast a spell and the extra flesh that he would not be keeping walked off of his body and through a gate to his flesh pits before he turned back to humanoid form; he didn’t even know what to call himself anymore.

“Free people, I am King Harlan Fomoria, I offer all of you a place to live, one where you will never again be slaves. If any of you have no desire to live under me, I can offer only food and coin which you may use to wander a time and find your own path.”

Harlan opened a gate back to Kor, explaining to those that wished to come that they would be processed, asked for a name and any work experience, and then be given an apartment to live in and two weeks worth of coin and food before they would be asked to work, as a sort of adjustment period.

With most of them having decided to stay in Kor, Harlan stood there, looking at the desert with his back to Colton, who felt that he knew some of what Harlan, the young man, was.

“I understand, that’s why you do it. I’m just glad that everything worked out this time.”

Harlan’s gaze was hard, as he spoke his voice became deeper and patches of scales could be seen, beginning to replace his skin.

“Nothing worked out, In an ideal world, I would be strong enough, fast enough, that I could solve these issues as they came, I’d arrive from the sky with an army of my own design at my back, and we could save them by the thousands, for as long as it takes, and then never again would I be required.”

Wings appeared on his back, and when he turned around to face Colton it was clear by his face that he was in one of his somewhat manic states; he was ready to do just about anything, because he could justify it far too easily by thinking of what he saw and heard.

As Harlan saw himself in the reflection of Colton’s eyes, the state was broken, and his tone returned to its pale shade instead of the black armor that covered him as a second skin.

“I have somewhere else I need to be.”

“You don’t need to be running off just because you got all scaly.”

“No, I am leaving because I’ve got a prison break that I need to take part in so I can back a coup, our little outing today pushed back that work by hours. I’ll expect your answer when I return, and not a moment sooner.”

Harlan stepped through a gate, leaving Colton in his office just outside of Kingdom.

He got in and went to see his wife.

“Oh, you’re back. Mosley was looking for you.”

“Should I just give it up?”

She looked up from her crochet and saw how her husband looked, his posturing was crooked, and his occupied mind was written plainly upon him, his age seemed to weigh on him for the first time in some time.

“What did he do?”

“He showed me what he can do. I saw him tear Cast apart like they were nothing, fire and acid splashed harmlessly against his iron fur and his let out breaths of fire and shadows that left… nothing.

But that ain’t all, no, that ain’t what got me all conflicted, he shielded slaves with his body against attacks that would knock our homes to the ground, seen chunks of flesh gouged out of him protecting them people.”

He sat in a chair across from her as she took note of him mixing up his speech and accent, falling between the ruler and the simple man who rose to his place.

“If he wanted us dead, he’d not be able to do a single thing about it, he’d claw through our lands leavin’ ‘em empty. But he’d never, not a single part of me think he’d do it, kid’s just lashing out at wrong as best he can.

Could I be a good man if I didn’t let him keep on tryin’?”

“I’m just an old outlaw, so don’t let me change your mind, but that boy isn’t right, not at all, he’s gonna burn out trying to fix the world; we should move somewhere nicer while we can, hard to imagine another time a man’ll move thousands of people for the dirt we’ve got here.”

“He was sayin’ he had to do a prison break. Wanted an answer when he got back.

Guess we’ll tell the children at dinner. Oh, ‘fore I forget, what’d Mosley want?”

“Hard to say with a man who won’t say anything, but I imagine he was going to tell you what I did.”

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

Darrath quietly crawled down the wall of the mansion, Arrow coming down unsteadily behind him as the pet was not accustomed to its own body, and he had little in the way of any instincts to draw on.

A few feet from the ground his back legs unstuck and he went head over heels into a bush while Darrath shushed him.

As for why he would sneak out of his own home when he could come and go as he pleased so long as he didn’t need to go to a class of some sort, the other children had mocked him as being weak because he needed a bodyguard around whenever he left the house, and he didn’t like that.

So now he had to make his way across the yard, deftly sneaking past the golems who saw him but didn’t report anything because he was allowed to leave, yet it boosted Darrath’s confidence that he got through without being stopped.

Once he crawled over the wall he made his way over to the Dague quarter to meet up with the children.

Jean was 15, and he was the older sibling of one of the other boys who would come to watch them and keep them organized sometimes when there were just a handful of them either early in the morning before most of them left their homes or later in the evening when most of the others had already left.

But today he had a girl with him, and he intended to impress her with his combat prowess.

“Today we are going to go outside the walls and I’ll be fighting goblins, so all of you stay here and don’t tell mom that I was gone.”

“Can I come?”

“Darrath? No, you can’t come, you’re too little.”

“But I have Arrow, he’s strong.”

“You can’t bring your cat either.”

“He’s not a cat, he’s a tiger.”

“How about you stay here and watch the others while I’m gone?”

“Alright.”

As soon as Jean and his would-be girlfriend moved out of sight, Darrath and Arrow followed quietly behind, though Arrows paw pads kept him far more quiet then Darrath’s clattering when his hands contacted hard surfaces a bit too harshly; the boy was spending his time talking himself up, and failed to notice either of them.

They made their way to a drainage grate and opened it up, it was one that was known and left purposely unlocked so the guards could catch those who tried to sneak in, but they cared little about who snuck out, failing to notice the small boy and his pet slipping past them as they played cards.

Once they were out in the plain between the city and the forest, Darrath and Arrow both hid in the tall grass to avoid the guards on the walls spotting them.

Unbeknownst to both of them, their desire to hide led to the activation of an ability that was inborn in his soul, and since Darrath’s soul was used in the creation of Arrow, it was in his as well.

Even if they were seen, a force compelled others to not mention that they had seen them, their eyes simply passed over the area where the boy and his animal moved, no threat came off of them that would cause them to take a second look.

The couple reached the forest and the boy started tracking the goblins, just a handful of them were there, and the boy knew about them from his father, who worked as a guard and said they’d leave them be unless they got any closer.

When they reached the small group the boy drew the sword his father gave him and told the girl to stay behind a tree and watch.

He crept forward and cut down one of the goblins, or rather he tried.

The mundane blade caught on bone and fat due to the boy taking improper care and dulling it; the creature screamed and yelled with fury enough to draw the ire of her kin.

As the boy tried to get the blade unstuck he was panicking and the goblins drew nearer with sharp rocks and sticks in their hands.

Dague as he was, they could not stab him in the chest from their low angle, so instead they went after his legs, felling him like an oak.

Yet as he saw the sharp wood coming towards his face, it suddenly broke angle and missed.

A loud beating sound like a swarm of locust met his ears and he feared something worse had arrived.

Arrow leapt at the throat of the small deep green humanoid and met its target true, that was an instinct which he did have, and it felt right.

The goblin thrashed around with the housecat sized tiger cub on its neck and collapsed shortly after.

Yet by the time it had killed the one, Darrath had pulled his stinger like thrusting sword and easily outmaneuvered the beasts, striking them at the brainstem and leaving them to fall like sacks of potatoes.

Harlan taught him as best he could, and while he may have been just a child mentally, he was physically a grown Pixie, and his balance and might matched that, making him far above simple goblins.

Even the Dague would’ve done better had he just dropped the sword, his longer reach and far superior strength to them, but he lacked the mindset that would let him beat three goblins to death with his bare hands,

The one on the ground still screamed, though Darrath silenced it shortly.

Suddenly he changed from the fighter Harlan was making, back to the young boy.

“Are you alright?”

Jean laid there on the ground, screaming as he tried to pull the stick from his leg.

“No no no, leave it in, you’ll die if you pull it out.”

Yet he didn’t listen and kept pulling at the length of sharpened wood.

Darrath knew that he wouldn’t be able to heal him if he got the stick out, but he wasn’t listening.

So he thought of what Harlan would do, and slapped the boy across the face.

Though Darrath didn’t know his own strength, and broke the boy’s jaw, which caused him to stop resisting.

Darrath considered it a success and started dragging the boy back to the city.

Once he got near the trees the girl stepped out, unphased by the blood and death.

“That was an interesting fight.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You are the king’s son, yes?”

Darrath nodded.

She grabbed Jean by the legs, lifting them up so that they were above his heart and he would be less likely to bleed out on the walk back.