He fought the beast, but its six wings were too powerful, the talons on its four legs shredded his armor.

As it finished him off his perspective changed.

He was that bird again, back in that field.

He remembered the shouting, the fear, the refusals to just retreat.

Harlan awoke paralyzed again.

The night terrors wouldn’t leave him be, no matter how much he tried to justify what he did, he couldn’t get their faces out of his dreams.

On three hours of good sleep, he should’ve been rested enough for a week without issue.

On three hours of bad sleep, he could barely focus on anything, his mind seeming like it wanted to return to the nightmares.

So he got up from the bed and wandered around the palace.

The guards would give him odd looks, but they wouldn’t stop him.

He didn’t have any destination in mind, he just walked and walked.

Eventually he left the palace to go down the dead streets of the city.

There was little in the way of a night life in this place, no brothels, the taverns would close at midnight, and the inns had curfews.

So it was odd that someone had been following behind him since before he left the palace.

He looked back at his memories and realized they had left one of the rooms not far from him shortly after he woke up.

Harlan turned the corner and just stopped, waiting for whoever it was.

When she ran into him the loose robe was revealed to just be a bedsheet, and with her loss of grip it fell from her body, showing her white fur.

“You are too rotund to be an assassin.”

Harlan hadn’t even realized what he said until the young woman started crying.

He leaned down and looked in her eyes.

She was albino, something he heard about, but hadn’t seen in a prime species.

Inside the veil superstition said they were bad luck because of their odd appearance and sensitivity to light that made them need glasses, thus they would more often choose to only come out at night, associating them with vampires.

He assumed it was little better out here.

He put his hand on her shoulder.

“I’m very sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

“But you thought it still.”

She slashed at him, her hand getting caught by his armor.

His eyes lost their pity.

“You will answer my questions or die.”

She screamed for help but Harlan already had a veil set up.

“Who are you?”

When she realized there was no escape, she pretended to calm down, but he could feel her fear swirling.

“My name is Petra, daughter of Cleo, Jakel is my uncle.”

“I hadn’t heard anything about you, but we’ll keep going on the assumption that you aren’t lying to me.”

“Really, Cleo is my mother, they just…”

“They just what?”

“They don’t like people seeing me, because of my appearance. And I can’t see well, the lights are all too bright, it hurts to look around without my veil during the day. So I wander around at night.”

“Have they ever hurt you?”

“What? NO! THEY JUST DON’T LIKE PEOPLE SEEING ME.”

She struggled against his armor, and eventually decided to use her free hand to conjure a fireball, slamming it into him, but at the same time, due to the distance she was caught up in her own attack.

Yet just as the pain set in, it was gone again.

She feared to open her eyes, worried he had taken the limb off and she was in shock.

“Next question, why were you following me?”

She saw her fur was regrown, and Harlan even let her other hand go, her mind went to fleeing, but at the same time, she had no idea if she’d get this chance again.

“They won’t let me learn magic, I really wanted to be part of your classes, so I was hoping to learn something by watching you.”

He looked up and down her body, finding the age of a Canis was slightly odd, and here they didn’t seem to have the tradition of cropping ears so they stood straight for women.

“How old are you?”

“14”

“Large for your age.”

He could see the pain on her face.

“I mean you are tall, I’m very sorry for what I said before, I haven’t been able to sleep well and it is affecting how I talk to people.”

She got up to walk away.

“I’ll teach you, some things at least.”

She stopped, offense fought with desire, and turned around.

“Why?”

“Because, I know what it’s like to be thought of as odd looking and judged based on that instead of who I am.”

“And you won’t tell mother?”

“Should I not? Haven’t you already learned magic?”

“Well, I… I sneak into the record rooms and read the scrolls, but nobody is supposed to teach me magic.”

“Then I will keep it a secret, just between us. Visit me in the night, which shouldn’t be an issue since you clearly know how to sneak past the guards.”

Harlan reached down into the sand, his fingers white hot, and made a pair of glass lenses.

On the outside he carved runes so small that they were almost impossible to see, and once activated he tested changing the mana flow to make the lenses darken.

“If you bring me some metal, I can fashion these into a pair of glasses that should help you during the day.”

“That was so fast! Amazing, thank you, I’ll be your best student ever and-”

“Just show up tomorrow night, I will decide if I’ll continue teaching you from there.”

She seemed to realize her tone and tried to bow in a more noble manner, but Harlan could tell how giddy she was.

Harlan had spent a week already training the would-be trainers of others.

He had originally planned a much shorter stay here since he thought he just needed to lay the groundwork and then set his golems with the right orders, but it felt wrong to do so now when it was clear that the people of the Sandsea didn’t understand magic the way Harlan wanted them to.

To them it was just a tool, and while many in Ragne viewed it like that, those people were invariably lower ranked mages.

He wanted to teach them to enjoy magic, to love what it could do and to seek to improve on everything that they had. As it stood they simply used the same old scrolls to teach the same old spells and techniques without looking for how to really improve themselves, their apathy and arrogance bothered Harlan greatly.

He stood there and watched as the last of his students, Jakel’s son, managed to burn out the last of his cards.

Harlan clapped and cheered, but quickly stopped himself, realizing how patronizing it might seem to the grown man in front of him.

“Ahem. Congratulations on finishing the cards, now you may begin soul searching.”

“Sometimes it is interesting to see how you react.”

“I would like to impart my knowledge, but I wish to impart my enthusiasm for it. Magic has been a constant in my life, it has never betrayed me. And by teaching all of you I can continue to believe that there is nobody who cannot be taught, only people who don’t want to learn.”

“You are quite naive at times. Why exactly are you teaching us anyway? From what I can see, you’d be better served turning us into more of you golems.”

Harlan’s face turned sour, and the man’s stomach dropped as he saw the fire in Harlan’s eyes grow.

“Those who see people as nothing but resources sicken me, and it is those people whose bodies fill my flesh pits and make my army.”

He turned away and entered a gate.

Harlan hated that he reacted as he had, but despite all attempts being made, he had yet to get a good night’s sleep.

He could keep going, he wasn’t going to collapse, but his mood only worsened.

So when a child who ran into his leg and hurt his snout looked up at Harlan’s angry face he froze in fear.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are you alright?”

The boy’s mother rushed over and got on her knees to grovel as a crowd quickly began to form.

“My apologies for my child, please show mercy, we are only lowly people who know no better.”

“No, you are not. You are just people, not lowly. I’ve no intention to harm anyone without reason, a child running into me is going to hurt himself far more than me.”

Harlan grabbed the boy’s hand and the bleeding from his snout stopped.

He wiggled and rubbed it, finding that the pain was gone and he felt great, a minor sickness having been cleansed from his system.

“I am here to help those who may need it, though you are not my citizens, it is the duty of a king to better the world, harming children does nothing of the sort.”

The woman stood up, quickly but politely trying to drag her son away from Harlan, but as she dragged him away, the boy asked what Harlan was as soon as they believed he couldn’t hear him, and the mother answered that she had no idea.

His appearance was… not like anything else, not really.

He wasn’t a beast, not Dague, not human, not Fomorian, Harlan was himself, and he didn’t know what to feel about that.

He took on the horns and the taller body because it seemed right at the time, but it only highlighted what he wasn’t.

His pale skin and eyes of light, dark and fire, his face, those were what remained of him.

It shouldn’t bother him, before now it hadn’t very much, he thought that being surrounded by so many different kinds of people meant he’d just blend in, he’d be another person who just looked different.

Harlan kept walking the streets until he was called back to the palace.

“Good work King Tatton, you’ve finished the lesson, your control is leagues above the others, feel free to try the concentric circles again.”

His tone was dull, and his eyes lifeless, but it was as if not one of them noticed, they just continued doing the work which Harlan told them to do for the sake of growing stronger and ignored his plight.

“13 circles, very nice.”

Harlan continued to watch the lessons, but everything felt wrong, he didn’t understand any of it, he didn’t want to do this anymore, he just wanted to see Adina.

He closed his eyes and imagined her.

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Before he knew it, the day had passed him by.

“Dinner is ready, King Fomoria.”

“Huh? Oh, thank you, King Tatton.”

“You may call me Tatton.”

“It’s best to keep things professional between us.”

“Why?”

“How much longer do you think you have? Seven? Nine years? I gave you five extra at the very most, and not a day more, you looked ready to keel over months ago at Carmilla’s party.”

“You fear death, not your death, but others, I think that-”

Harlan put his hand up.

“I’ve already had this conversation, it's been the topic of many conversations with a friend of mine.

You are right, I don’t want to connect with you because I fear your death is too soon, and it would cause me harm to go through that.”

“Ah. Then I shall not push the issue, though I do hope you become softer towards my children and grandchildren. Perhaps you’d like to meet the younger ones?”

“You have what, eight of them?”

“Seven.”

Harlan could see how uncomfortable he became about the subject, and it infuriated him.

He’d already spent these last few nights teaching Patra and she was a nice, albeit clearly very sheltered girl, and Harlan couldn’t help but see her like he saw Adina.

They looked at her like a curse, but at the same time they couldn’t bring themselves to kill her.

So she remained locked away during the day and was only let out at night, her grandfather not even considering her part of the family.

“I’m quite tired, maybe another time.”

In the morning Harlan saw Jakel training with his saber, that Godtouched steel which Harlan had only very rarely seen, something which was truly befitting a king.

“King Fomoria. Would you care to join me?”

He would care, but Harlan was trying to be a good guest as much as they had been acceptable hosts.

“Of course.”

Jakel squared up, intent on showing Harlan that he wasn’t weak, that this saber which had been passed down for centuries was enough to be seen as a powerful nation.

“You have no sword?”

“I stopped carrying one, little point with what else I can do.”

Harlan took a stance with one hand out at a 45 degree angle and with an open palm facing inward while the other remained near his waist.

On his feet he cast spells for friction reduction while the hand near his waist was used to spin himself around.

Harlan understood how it seemed, but he had been feeling Jakel’s jealousy and anger towards him for days already, and it was annoying.

For the next 30 minutes people gathered to watch Harlan fight Jakel, but it was entirely one sided.

Harlan was simply too fast for him, the blade could slice Harlan with ease, but it was impossible for Harlan to be cut by someone who couldn’t touch him.

Yet that feeling bothered him, he knew that the blade would cut him, but he only knew by assumption, he knew that the gold white metal was powerful, it was magic, it was called Godtouched, but that was all what he knew from others.

He had gotten so caught up in what it might do to him that he fumbled the deflection, losing the tips of his middle fingers.

It hurt, it burned, the blade was abnormal, attacking his soul.

Not realizing immediately what he had done and still expecting Harlan to deflect the next attack, Jakel continued with the motions which had been drilled into his body a thousand times and followed up the slash with a stab to the heart.

Shock filled the room, and Harlan collapsed in a pool of his own blood.

“GET A HEALER.”

Harlan plunged his hand into his chest and the smell of hot iron filled the air as he sealed the wound himself.

Yet this would not be enough, the blade canceled his natural healing and made using magic to heal more difficult.

“Thread…”

Harlan said in a weak voice.

“What?”

“Needle… thread… I’ll sew it myself.”

A maid happened to carry a small sewing kit with her and Jakel did as said.

They watched in wonder as the needle and thread seemed to come to life and close up the hole.

The healers and guards helped move Harlan to his room so he could rest, the magic he had used did help, but there was still a hole which was only slowly healing as the magic of the metal faded away.

Harlan laid there in the bed, bandages stained with black blood on his chest.

And Jakel watched, wondering if now was the time to put an end to him before he grew more powerful and started conquering them.

He slid his saber from its sheath and placed it to Harlan’s neck.

Then in his slumber, Harlan muttered to himself.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I couldn’t… I failed you…”

These words brought Jakel a moment of hesitation, and hearing the guards outside greeting Patra made him put the saber away.

“What are you doing here?”

“I… I just wanted to see the king that was visiting, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

The chance was gone, she had already witnessed him with Harlan, if he killed him, he would need to kill her to ensure nobody who he couldn’t be sure was going to stay quiet knew.

For a brief moment he considered the idea, pin her death on Harlan somehow, justify the killing, but he decided against it, anyone Carmilla sent would likely find out the truth somehow, because that is simply what she does.

“You have seen him, return to your room and your classes, you’ve been sleeping in too much lately, and your body shows your laziness.”

She fled the room in tears.

After another half an hour, the magic of the blade faded further, and with Harlan’s healing factor back to what it should be, but he pretended to remain sleeping still.

He didn’t open his eyes when Jakel put the saber to his neck because he felt another presence in the room, and put his faith into Coronach.

As he laid there and tried to go back to sleep, still acting as if he already was, Patra came in.

She sat at the foot of his bed.

“I’m happy you didn’t tell mother that I had snuck out, she would’ve been mad at me and made me spar with the soldiers again.

I’m also happy that you are sleeping, you looked so tired before, and it would be hard to talk with you if you were awake. I heard you had a son. I want to meet him, because I hope he is like you, but younger, because you are scary, and mother said you did a lot of bad things.

I know I said they didn’t hurt me before, but I think you wouldn’t agree, but really, they are trying their best having a member of the family who was born wrong.”

She continued on with complaints about life until he finally fell into a real sleep.

He awoke some hours later, Patra’s words lulled him into a better dream, anger drove his mind away from what he had done, and instead towards the many times he fantasized about killing Adina’s father.

Before he was allowed to leave a doctor washed Harlan’s wound and checked that it had really stopped bleeding..

“That blade, it should’ve done far worse than it did. Yet it is almost closed, I can see your flesh heal before my eyes though you’ve cast no more spells.”

“I’m quite abnormal.”

She scoffed and left with the other doctors, finding nothing wrong with him.

He walked out of town and found a nicely shaped rock he could sit on.

Harlan could feel the heat, and the water he put on it sizzled away, but even on his bare skin, he just felt heat.

What bothered him most, like so many other times, was that he didn’t understand why it bothered him.

He was powerful, he thrived on this power, without it he would feel incomplete, and he had done this to himself.

He made the choice to be champion, to replace his flesh with that of beasts, to spent all of those nights working on himself and his magic.

And then he came here, to this place.

He had seen things that he would never see back home.

A nation ruled by a vampire.

Men of metal.

Beastkin he had never seen.

Humans that were somewhere between.

He has a son.

He calls Dawn his mother.

Harlan tried to forget home, to call this place where he is where he belongs, but the lie is fading, and thoughts of those he may never see again eat away at it faster every day.

Sitting there on that rock, he closed his eyes for just a moment, and it turned from a desert to a cabin.

“I do love that you think so much about what you do, and what you are. But sometimes you trap yourself in a cage of guilt with your own thoughts whipping you until your flesh is raw. Do you believe in karmic debt?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do, but you don’t like to admit it. How many lives must you save before what happened before is cleared?”

“There isn’t an answer, I can’t just-”

“Please, sit.”

Harlan moved to the rocking chair next to her and she poured him a glass of tea from a crystal pitcher.

“What is all of this?”

“Harlan, I say this from a place of love, you’re killing of Haldren was something I allowed to happen.”

“I know that you knew, because you watch my future, and you didn’t stop me because you wanted me to sink or swim.”

She shook her head.

“No, I allowed it to happen because that was a debt you could one day repay.”

Suddenly a large pillar stepped down in front of them, causing Harlan to jump in his seat.

“What is that?”

“Have you become so far gone you can’t even recognize yourself?”

The Cabin now stood on a hill far away that let him get a look at the full scope of the thing which stretched for miles and was covered in a glass dome with its own false sun and moon and clouds.

“The Living City of Fomoria. You can pay back that debt you owe, even if you don’t believe me, even if when it happens you don’t believe yourself, it shall happen. What you see here is what happens you don’t believe even in your wildest dreams that you can ever set right what happened.”

“How is that even possible? Is there anyone living in it?”

“Your citizens live a life free from any worry, food, water, entertainment, all of it is provided freely, they don’t even work. As for how.”

With a flick of her wrist the ground swelled, and the cabin was torn apart by geysers of blood which shot through it.

When Harlan got his bearings and wiped the blood from his eyes he saw the mountains of gravestones which he slid down, they covered every inch of the ground until there was no more ground for them to sprout from.

“The gods call me mad for choosing you, because they don’t understand, they see all of the bad that you could do and they don’t see what that same drive could do if you just keep yourself together.”

“So your plan is to guilt me into behaving.”

“Harlan, you are my own and only, my champion, my hero.

You are the warmth which I grant the world, the arbiter of justice. What I fear is not that you will one day turn into a monster who loses himself, but that you will be a man and lose yourself, not bringing destruction, but simply falling to apathy.”

She knelt down and grabbed his chin.

“You are not my child any longer, you are my true champion.

You are different, you are an outsider, you will never fit into their molds. Yet that is exactly what I love about you, there is no other person who could ever be my Harlan.

So please, stand up, see this through to the end.”

“See what through?”

“All of it.”

She kissed him on the lips and he woke up.

Harlan jolted awake on the stone he sat upon and reached down to feel his wound having been opened, black flakes of dried covered his chest where it had dried when the wound closed again.

He had passed out from blood loss.

Harlan tried to contact The Darkness, to see if what happened was real, or just the dream of a damaged body.

She did not answer him, but he felt the press of her cold lips still.

Harlan got up from his stone, cleaning off the bits of dried blood and walked back inside.

The guards at the gate looked worried since they could smell the blood.

“King Fomoria, are you alright.”

“Yes. Thank you for asking.”

Harlan taught his class that day as if nothing had happened at all.

For people of such ages and having already gone through Harlan’s mana control exercises, splitter and spiral magics were relatively easy to learn.

Whatever issues were had could be solved through self teaching.

“Are you alright?”

“Huh? Oh, yes, I'm… I’m fine.”

“Perhaps you need more rest, Godtouched steel can have odd effects on some people.”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Very well. If there is something you need, simply ask.”

“Yes, I’ll…”

Harlan simply walked away.

He laid there in the guest room and stared at the ceiling, wondering what in the world the Darkness had done that for.

Everything up until that point made sense to him, she was giving her warnings about him crossing a line, which she had done many times before, and telling him that he was the only one who could be him was normal, she hadn’t had a champion before now because nobody met her exact criteria.

But then why the kiss?

Did she know how he had been missing Adina?

Despite all of what she’s said, Harlan had no idea how well she actually understood people.

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

Sholl flew south until he reached past the trees where a wide and raging river cut a natural border in the land.

He stopped a moment to look at it, while it was unlikely, him being dragged to the depths by a monster was always a possibility.

The horrors of the deep tended to stay there, but there were so many of them that aquatic magical creatures were more often myth than simple recorded fact.

Nobody doubted something like the Kraken, they were a species, or perhaps a single entity, which often attacked any ship which got near the veil.

Yet it was harder to prove it when someone said they saw a mermaid.

Most people assumed them to be real, but they were a species that lived near and inside of the veil, and few would see them, fewer still lived to tell the tale.

Sholl shook away his thoughts and simply flew over the river.

He had passed miles of arid land that was turning to a proper desert, but had seen no signs of these alleged flesh devouring monsters.

He assumed it more likely that the armies before simply made an excuse or ran into something that was abnormal to the area, as all life thus far had been mundane or weak magical creatures.

Seeing what looked to be an abandoned home, Sholl flew over to check the structure.

Inside he found little, but by the dust, someone had been here sometime recently, likely in the last month since it was clear where things had been moved around such as dressers and beds.

But he found no clues to who had been here, or where they had gone.

Following the marks where things had been dragged was more fruitful than he expected.

Due to the area having walls around it and the arid environment, the tracks hadn’t yet been washed or blown away.

They abruptly cut off halfway to the barn, meaning either they picked the items up completely at this point, or they were taken through a gate.

He looked at the direction they were going, not actually directly to the barn, no, they were skewed.

Sholl flew further over the desert, finding a much larger city that had clearly seen better days, but wasn’t necessarily in disrepair, he just found the repairs crude and they artistically clashed with the older stone buildings they were added onto.

The moment he stepped through the gate he felt fear, something here was wrong.

He stopped in his tracks, seeing no direct threats.

Sholl’s spells searched for traps, but found nothing, and divining for people had given no results either.

So he strode forward, cautiously.

The other Fingers mocked him greatly for his weakness and his rather cowardly actions at times, they would just walk forward as if they owned the city, dealing with the threats if they dared to reveal themselves.

Sholl felt eyes on him and looked at the lighthouse-like towers that marked the four corners of the large house, the only in the place with a yard around it.

He flew closer to the tower, hoping to see the person or beast which had put his senses on edge.

The tower blinked at him.