It stood as a tower built inside of a hole so deep that the bottom received direct light for only an hour each day.

The Harlan’s floated hundreds of feet above the clouds, using spells to see through the fluffy white and down to near the bottom.

They got one another up to speed on what exactly the plan was, and then they split up.

One of the Harlan’s found it slightly disconcerting how independent his other selves had become.

There was a time when he knew what each of them doing, back when there were only half a dozen, but the streams of information became overwhelming as they weren’t working on a single project or even in the same general area, some of them were spread across the entire stripe of land.

What he didn’t want was for there to be other hims that would eventually make choices that were too far away from the base Harlan, like Xol with Kleon and Dun’Kel.

He pushed these thoughts away and the other Harlan’s decided to work out amongst themselves a way to keep the original up to date on what they are doing by restricting their reports to certain times of the day.

The Harlan who planned the heist, or jailbreak, or whatever this really was, came down at shift change and silently killed a guard, wearing his body like a suit and leaving not a drop of blood behind.

There were a few of them which he had been watching with the hope that he could maintain their appearance and mannerisms long enough to reach the brain of the operation.

With three Harlan’s in one room and the heads of the guards laying at their feet, they looked over the prisoner list; It was almost terrifying how well organized everything was..

Favorite foods and colors and books and any marks on their body and the when and how of them.

It was a long list, but eventually they found the prisoners that they had been looking for, and a few that he hadn’t been looking for, but that had piqued his interest.

A mind approached the room, but Harlan, the one who planned this, had it covered.

Illusions and air scrubber spells made it seem as if the two dead guards were simply sitting still from their watch boxes.

“Code.”

“Red orchid.”

“That was yesterday's code.”

“I just got on shift, please don’t tell them that I overslept and missed the new code.”

The Goliath rubbed his chin.

“Don’t let it happen again, and you did help me before.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, and it's black rose today.”

Harlan waved away the guard.

“I don’t like overlooking details. You had everything timed out but you missed that?”

“No, I knew, we knew that he would accept the excuse.”

“To what end?”

“I thought it would be interesting to be entirely sure about our ability to read people. We might think we understand others, but it is good to make sure we actually can.”

Harlan wasn’t particularly happy about it, but he understood the need to test one’s understanding.

Two of the three Harlan’s stayed in the control room to keep up the facade while the main body went to the different cells by shifting himself into a simple bird like those that constantly flittered through the levels delivering letters, it was uncomfortable to hold a form smaller than what he should, but pushing his limits wasn’t dangerous in the short term.

When he reached the cell, he opened their mundane locks with telekinesis in moments, something which the planner had practiced quite a bit on an empty cell that wasn’t regularly guarded.

Harlan wanted to find out why the one man had a blank page, but his curiosity wasn’t more important than the mission, and he went to the man who would have the power to lead the coup.

He sat in his cell that was unlike the others, with a stone table and a tea set on it.

The ground was made from loose colorful stones which had been arranged into a black and white checkered pattern.

“A visitor?”

“Yes. I’ve come to see you, Dantevius.”

“Please, sit then, allow me to pour you a cup.”

The man’s actions were dainty and light, but Harlan saw his grace not as a man who lived a graceful life, but rather as one who had trained to never waste a single movement.

The man met Harlan’s gaze.

“A warrior then?”

“Yes.”

Harlan sipped the tea, finding it to be bland and unappealing, having been brewed out of moss from the wall and without sugar.

“Do watch that you don’t burn yourself.”

“No worries, I’m not delicate.”

The man closed his eyes and nodded.

Harlan took note of the odd robes he wore that covered him only to half past his knees and a single side of his body, leaving his right arm free and allowing kicks to not rip anything; they had no buttons, but rather a complex manner of folding which held it to his body and betrayed how much fabric was really there.

He opened his eyes.

“I decline your offer.”

“But I haven’t said it yet.”

“I’ve left behind my killing days.”

Harlan lowered his head in thought, quickly discarding the idea that he could kill this man to hide his being there.

“Would you mind if we continued speaking anyway?”

“Not at all, a friendly face is always welcome in my home.”

Harlan got a sudden flash, remembering Tau.

“So I spark something in you?”

“Uncanny, your ability to read others that is.”

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“A peaceful man must understand others, how else could I discover how best to make peace for others.”

“You are unlike any other Goliath I’ve met, the new path seem rather likely to avoid conflict that they don’t think is needed, but you have a certain air of serenity around you.”

“Old and new path, such terrible things, a way for brother to strike brother and refuse understanding, a dogma only invites zeal, zeal may undo the greatest of men, or turn the most lowly into a king.

But you know that well enough already. What is a not Dague doing here?”

“Hoping to find a person who might help me right the world a little bit more.”

“There is no righting of places or people through crimson tides. You would ask me to bend others to my will.”

“The Cast refuse peace, I am simply doing what needs done.”

“You’ve let them drag you down to their level, and now they will beat you with experience.

Match not hate with hate, temper it with understanding.”

“Do you have a hundred more ways of saying nothing?”

Harlan’s tone was harsh and venomous, but the man kept his gentle smile and reached his hand towards Harlan.

When they touched, Harlan’s palm was no bigger than his fingertip which he used to read Harlan.

“Worry lines, you’ve been under a great deal of stress. Loss, you’ve grieved someone very close, though… not by blood?”

Harlan shifted his hand, changing each line until the lines made a star as a joke.

“Love line, bursting at the seams, but it has no target. Strange, I would expect to reach lust from such a thing, but the outcome is odd, as if that energy just fades into the aether.”

“Enough superstition, I’ve wasted my time here, keep patting yourself on the back over how peaceful you are while people are raped and butchered.”

The man lowered his head and shook it.

“Would you hear a final reading?”

“I doubt you’d stop if I said no anyway.”

“Rage line, a candle with both sides burning, your life will be cut short if you continue down your path.”

“That’s fine, I’ve got another.”

Harlan left the room, making his way down to the next cell.

He entered the cell of a Goliath woman, though to call it one seemed wrong, it was a lab.

Harlan shifted his hands into claws, quickly killing the guard who had been in the room to watch the prisoner by entering through his eye and then scrambling his brain.

“What do you want? You’re disturbing my research.”

“Your file was rather vague about what that research was, what is manifestation?”

“File isn’t vague, you’re just ignorant.”

She was small for a Goliath, barely over 10 feet, and her proportions were slightly more human, mostly due to her hands not being giant maces, but rather smaller maces, still larger compared to the body than any human he’d seen before.

“When we get strong enough, we change, we can’t use magic, but we get something else, a power set in us during our creation that manifests by either age of training. Manifestation could be anything, you have the stink of the bloody coward on you, so you’ve seen him read you, that is his manifestation, that empathy he gained ruined his mind.”

“It’s not real empathy, he had no mental powers.”

“Which is the most curious part, is it not?”

She stepped closer to Harlan and over the guard’s dead body.

“I believe it is a Fae power, but granted to us, buried deep inside of our genetic code so that even Aarde can’t remove it without wiping out the Goliath’s as a whole, and they’d never do that, because we’ve broken no rules too extremely.”

“What do you know of Aarde?”

“You want me, I know you do, take me out and I’ll explain everything.”

“I have one more prisoner to check on, what can you tell me about the one sealed at the lowest floor.”

The woman didn’t say anything, but she froze in her movements, stopping just a second too long while holding a glass beaker; he would get his answers from here eventually.

Harlan made his way down to the deepest pit, the sublevel of the tower, where a massive cell had been constructed.

The hall was filled with dread, Harlan’s hair stood on end more and more he stepped forward, taking a great deal of power to just force one foot in front of the other, but eventually compulsion prevented him from going down it again.

Yet then half way back, another compulsion started, calling him, demanding he set free what was inside.

Then that compulsion went silent, and the one which demanded he leave returned in full force, causing Harlan to flee the tunnel.

So he went back to the researcher, Murk, and picked her up, leaving through a gate along with his other selves, she was not a woman who cared about her nation, she was one who simply wished to learn about the world, and Harlan killing her for not coming was too great a risk to argue against the man asking her to go through the cut out air leading down to a place with no doors.

He had one more stop before he went back to the UT, and the Harlan which ran the lab would be fine to onboard the woman.

Joan and Darrath were in her office; Joan startled when she saw Harlan come in.

“Harlan, I swear, I was going to call you.”

“About what?”

He knew exactly what had happened, unbeknownst to any of them, not every body Harlan was in was humanoid, a chameleon like creature remained out of sight and watched over Darrath at all times even when he had other guards.

Joan fidgeted before handing Harlan a file, the report of Darrath’s little outing.

“Thank you, all I want is honesty. And I don’t think this is a failure on your part, my other selves contacted the golem commander units and they saw Darrath leave but saw nothing wrong with him doing that.

Darrath, you did well, you stayed back and let the boy make his own choices, but when it was clear that his life was absolutely in danger you stepped in and took your enemies down without hesitation while Arrow helped.”

He looked very happy at his father’s praise.

“Are you going to be back soon? Are you staying now?”

Harlan closed his eyes.

“I still have things I need to do.”

“Why did you close your eyes?”

“I want to stay here, but people need my help, and I can’t turn away from them. I hope things are better some day, but I need to make choices as a ruler, not just for myself.”

Darrath hugged Harlan, and Harlan hugged him back.

“I’m sorry, I need to go now.”

“Ok. See you later. And you need to meet my new friend, she wants to meet you.”

“Oh, what’s her name?”

“I forgot to ask.”

Harlan laughed as he stepped through the gate.

Back in Kingdom, he slumped down on his bed and shortly after Colton knocked on his door.

“Come in.”

“You wanted your answer. Get land ready, we’ll make an announcement in the morning, and we’ll go town to town and tell the people, give them time to get ready to leave or stay, imports won’t be the same with fewer people left.”

“I will not fail. I cannot fail.”

“Don’t be saying things like that, thinking you can do it all just breaks men once they realize they can’t.”

Harlan looked no different on the outside, but his contemplative hum came out as a reptilian bellow.

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

Darrath went to see the girl who he had saved before, Jean was there in the Dague quarter watching the other children as well and failing to woo her after his last failing.

“Hello.”

She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and her hands on his chin as she sat on the stone bench.

“How have you been, my little prince.”

“I’m fine, papa was here for a little bit and he said I was brave for saving Jean. Jean, are you legs alright?”

“My legs are fine.”

The boy seemed bitter about what happened, but Darrath didn’t have Harlan’s empathy, nor was he good with tones, without physical contact he couldn’t realize it.

“Hey, what is your name?”

He ignored Jean, instead turning to the girl.

“I am Viviane, but my friends call me Vivi.”

“Hello Vivi.”

“Aren’t you presumptuous?”

“I am.”

He spoke with confidence, but failed to understand the meaning behind her words.

“Very well then. Did you have a question for me?”

“No, I just wanted to make sure you’re ok.”

“Why wouldn’t I be? I didn’t fight.”

“Papa always looks sad when he’s fighting, and grandma gets sad after she sees him fighting.”

“That is a conversation that I think you are too young to understand. May I visit your home?”

“Yeah, then we can play there.”

Darrath rushed back to the mansion, expecting praise for making a friend who wants to come over.