Harlan was led to a perfectly round tunnel beyond the Queen’s home.

On the walls he saw carvings, they were fresh, some so fresh that they hadn’t even been finished, sharp edges that contrasted the more refined and rounded edges of the other closer to the entrance.

At the entrance to roughly 20 feet inside, it was just masses of Cerast climbing over one another trying to get somewhere.

Past 20 feet things changed, some of the Cerast sprouted horns that gored those which tried to climb over them.

Past 40 feet, they grew wings, flying to their destination, the sky having enough space that they no longer fought one another.

At the end things were even rougher, much of the fine detail on the scales simply hadn’t been finished at all.

The winged and horned Cerast swirled around their target, the object of their desire, those closest seemed to have sparks coming from their mouths.

“Why is it covered up?”

“It isn’t done yet, I haven’t seen how it ends.”

“What does it mean so far?”

“Something will let us tap into that ancient draconic power, but we don’t know yet.”

“I saw people wearing horns earlier, do they know about your carving?”

“Yes, many of us are prophetic, but it’s so hard to understand what is being seen. I carve things, it helps me center my visions. That it is requiring such a large canvas as this means it is very significant.”

“With flesh sculpting, I could grant you horns and wings.”

“I don’t think I'll see you at the end of the path. The end is something primal, peaceful.”

“Any idea why the people who aren’t wearing those horns are afraid of me?”

“Change is hard for everyone, you are an avatar of change. When I sight you specifically, I can’t find a single path to follow, it is always shifting. They are afraid of what they can’t understand.”

“The carving is beautiful, I hope to see it once it is done.”

“I hope I can finish it.”

They stood there in silence, looking at the walls for a time, then they moved back to the castle to continue the lessons.

Inside, one of them reached their hands towards Harlan.

“I don’t like communicating that way.”

“Liar?”

“There are secrets I keep that I would rather remain kept. So yes.”

“Understand.”

“I’m sorry, I did tell them that you didn’t like connections like that, but they wanted to try anyway.”

“So long as they remain with trying then nothing will go beyond that.”

“What does that mean?”

“I am a violent man, my entire life shows that.”

Fangre cocked her head, trying to read Harlan.

For a people who could be completely open, and whose faces were much less able to show expressions, reading a human was hard, it was something that could not be learned as a child like humans would, it was something that had to be learned when they interacted with other races, which was a rare occurrence.

“I can’t tell if you are telling the truth.”

“Were I not a violent man, I wouldn’t have a kill count in the high five digits.”

“You seem like a fair man.”

“Your inability to read me has no bearing on reality.”

“You seem-”

“I came here to teach magic, not to be friends.”

“Tatton and Jakel must’ve had a rather poor effect on you.”

“I trusted that Carmilla was fair, but she let those mutts screw me over and I’m not allowed to set things right.”

“What does setting things right mean to you?”

“Someone else put in charge, Patra not needing to hide away all day.”

“If you had to choose between killing them, and Patra getting respect, what would you pick?”

Harlan didn’t say another word to her, he just continued teaching.

When they next needed a break, they cleared the room on Fangre’s order.

“What now?”

“I still see the father. Where is that violent man?”

“I refer to my past comments.”

“You hesitated before.”

“By the fucking gods, what is it with you? With so many others? Why do you try so hard to convince me that I am something else then what I am?”

“I see a future where you are the sunrise, your light bathes wide swaths of land.”

“Sighting is inaccurate at the best of times, my god does it with every free moment of her time and she can’t perfectly predict the future, she has to have constant contingencies to get anything resembling a consistent plan.”

“I can’t say what she says, but I see good things in your future.”

“I notice you don’t have a family.”

“Fine, you may change the subject. No, I am infertile, every ruler is. The eggs I’ve laid are all stillborn.”

“So you have no blood relation to the past rulers?”

“When the king dies, a new king is born.”

“Hmm… perhaps it has to do with Wyrmwood being the only true dragon? But what confuses me is that you have breasts, yet no nipples.”

“My, that is certainly a way to change a subject. I choose to believe that it is simply a way for others to tell that we are male or female at a glance.”

“You aren’t a guided evolution from snakes to Cerast, you are an anomaly.”

“There is little sense in worrying about why we are the way we are. Why do humans have two arms and not four?”

“Because all prime races come from a blueprint handed down by the highest god, Life, she has two arms, two legs, two eyes, and is generally configured like us. Aarde stuck very close to her original design, but stripped us down, no horns for instance.”

“You are full of knowledge.”

Fangre collapsed suddenly, and Harlan could feel her mind and soul burst with energy.

“Go, home… ”

“Are you alright?”

“Home, danger, help them. Alright.”

When Harlan tried to gate home, it fizzled, the air shimmered, but no entrance was opened.

He tried to contact his people, Dawn, Mercedes, Joan, but he got no connection, each of them was blocked.

Harlan opened a gate farther away and started to fly.

When he got within a few miles he could see the rising fires.

His body twisted, but his shifting was slow, his mind couldn’t block all of the pain.

He stumbled in the air, but recovered.

With six wings, claws, fangs, and larger horns, Harlan moved faster than a bullet as his many eyes looked for signs of who needed to die.

He knew who his enemy was, that much was clear by the beam that moved impossibly fast and nearly took him out of the sky.

He shouldn’t have been able to dodge it, had it been aimed at center mass he would’ve lost an arm, but aimed at an arm, he only lost a few feathers.

He recognized the way the air trembled, and the next was dodged without issue.

Harlan didn’t know how to fight the Finger, he had lost before, but he had also improved himself since that last happened, and there wouldn’t be an element of surprise or trying to bait out more sigils from the man.

They were in Kor, bodies were in the street, he needed to end it as fast as he could.

He took into account the damage that would be caused by an attack, if he caused more citizens to die than Sholl, it would be a lost battle, he wasn’t yet ready to ignore collateral damage.

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Harlan dropped like a brick from directly above, dodging the beams as best he could.

When he was about to land on him, crushing Sholl like a can, another attack came from the side, this one cold, sapping heat from the area around it and focusing it on a spear no longer than a human’s forearm.

Harlan knew that he needed to dodge the attack, deflect it, burn it up, anything but take it.

But it was too late, he was too focused on Sholl, Helik’s spear pierced Harlan’s wrist and immediately he made the choice to sever the entire arm.

He had eaten a very large lunch already, he could take the cost of regenerating one.

Yet there was flesh around, he could do it for free, all he needed to do was reach out to them, to the bodies of his citizens that lay on the ground.

His internal conflict lasted a moment, but in a fight, it was an eternity.

So close to the ground, to Sholl, who was holding his next beam, Harlan had little choice but to take the attack.

Little choice however, was not no choice.

He had seen the ice spear only once, and only just before he was struck by it, but he saw it once, and he gleamed something from that.

Using telekinesis he tossed the severed arm that was radiating cold and had frozen solid in an instant at Sholl, whose beam was severely weakened as the heat aspect was pulled from it, the energy turning the arm into a far more potent area of chilling radiance.

Helik couldn’t help but admire Harlan a little, he was quick witted, and he was lucky.

Yet while Sholl had to cut short his beam to avoid feeding the cold any longer, the arm itself couldn’t be turned against the Finger for long before Helik shut down the cold.

Harlan pulled bodies to him, subsuming them for temporary mass and healing.

“So it’s true, you are the monster we are looking for. Sholl here was almost thinking that you weren't after all, some other batch of new monsters suddenly appeared in a port city way on the northern tip, just past Lith, a small city by the name of Portal. You see-”

The small extra set of arms on Harlan’s back had drawn the sigil of beam, and it harmlessly passed through his body and at the Fingers.

Helik moved to block the attack with a much quicker to draw sigil that made an icy shield.

Harlan quickly replicated that sigil, making only a black speck.

“Fool! I said to only use the bolt and weapon sigils.”

“He didn’t even do it right.”

To accentuate his point, Helik threw another of his spears, so far as he could tell, Harlan’s sigil had failed.

Yet as the spear got near, the pinprick of void expanded and sucked the spell up.

“Or perhaps he did. Would you be interested in a conversation.”

“Anything less than you immediately leaving is not a conversation to be had.”

Harlan swiped the ground, sending stone shrapnel at the pair and kicking up a cloud of dust.

“Did you think that mundane stone was going to hurt us?”

“No.”

The voice came from where Harlan should be, but both of them felt the air move as Harlan went through a gate and nearly landed right on both of them.

Yet they didn’t dodge far enough, his gravity spell was ready.

At 20x normal gravity, Sholl was sent to the ground, his body simply couldn’t bear the weight like Harlan on all fours or Helik with his greater power could.

Helik knew that he would need to guard his weaker brother and he chose to strike Harlan in hand to hand.

With his concentration broken and flying through the air not by choice, Harlan’s spell was gone.

“I heard you were strong, but you don’t seem so tough to me.”

Harlan staggered out, spitting up blood.

“WE HAVE YOU NOW, LET’S SEE YOU STOP US WITHOUT LEGS!”

“WAIT.”

It was too late, Sholl, his pride wounded by Harlan living before, and not wanting to waste any time, launched another of his beams intending to cripple Harlan.

Yet a smile born of malicious joy flashed across his face as a gate opened, sending the beam right back to Sholl, who only lived by Helik taking some of the damage for him.

“Damnit, this is why you aren't allowed at the frontlines, you don’t have combat instinct.”

Sholl wouldn’t make the same mistake a second time, and moved to heal his brother as Harlan barreled towards them.

Harlan easily weighed three tons, yet the quickly healed Helik stood defiantly in his way.

He put on the act of being lumbering, but when Helik with his hands covered in icy gauntlets from his weapon sigil threw his punch, Harlan dodged the attack and hit him with a cross counter.

Halran’s longer limbs and the sudden burst of speed from imbibing with fire and wind let his punch land with devastating effect.

At least that was the hope.

Helik tumbled through buildings before righting himself and sticking his hands into the ground to slow down.

He shot back at Harlan like a ballista, his face noticeably caved in but seemingly not affecting the man, his attempt at blocking the Finger’s attack leading to both of his arms being broken and him repeating what he had just done to the other, being sent through buildings and tumbling across the ground.

“IT WAS A GOOD PUNCH, GLAD TO HAVE COME ALONG.”

Harlan laid there, both arms had been demolished and pushed back into his chest, shattering his ribs and damaging his organs.

His eyes went black.

“I don’t have time for this right now.”

“Use your sigil, you have no weapon, you are primal, you are a weapon.”

“Why are you being direct? What is hap-”

Harlan was awake again.

He immediately began casting his sigil, taking care to remember not to absorb too much of it.

“You don’t think I killed him, do you?”

“If my beam before didn’t kill him despite so much of his body being destroyed, I can’t imagine a punch, even enhanced by your weapon would’ve-”

Harlan traded blows with Helik again, yet now his arms were covered in pitch black bone, not unlike Darrath’s own chitin.

Instead of pushing him back, Harlan shifted the gravity, pulling Helik towards him to make the blow land far more solidly.

Helik’s neck was snapped, but not lethally.

With just a touch, Sholl had Helik back to peak condition before Harlan had the chance to attack him.

Helik quickly countered with a straight, but a gate opened, directing the attack at Sholl.

Yet he already saw that trick once before, and what was a straight ended up punching at the ground in front of the gate instead, two trails of ice traveled around it and leapt from the ground, cutting Haraln’s legs off at the knees.

“You should always target the healer first. Sholl, you’ve got what, a dozen or so heals like that left in you?”

“More.”

“See, that is why two is always better than one in a fight.”

“I agree.”

Dawn attacked with the sword Harlan made for her, it was one of his femur blades, and it bit deeply into the ice of his Helik’s arm.

“A Dague isn’t-”

She put her free hand to his elbow and her armor let out a spiraled beam of radiance, something Sepul taught her in life and she put in her armor.

Helik lost his arm, and then he lost the other since Sholl was where she had really been aiming and once again he was forced to block.

“Let’s see if he really does have a dozen of those full heals left in him. Harlan, I’ll buy you time.”

“You need to run, you can’t-”

“I was the only female Ranger of my generation, I’ve been fighting things stronger than me before I popped you out of me. Find this guy’s weakness and then join the fight.”

“So this is the mother of the monster? I won’t lie, I really don’t mind hitting women.”

Dawn dodged everything Helik could throw out.

Whereas Harlan spread his focus across many things, she had hyper focused on imbibing to bridge the gap in strength between her and others.

She was really preparing to fight Carmilla, even if it was going to take years or decades, she didn’t trust her at all, and she believed it was a matter of time before Harlan would need her as back up.

Water made her flexible and smoothed her movements, fire gave her explosive strength, but the downside was of overheating cooled by water, and wind gave her more speed and enhanced reaction time on top of what fire gave her.

He tried to get some distance, the shifting black blade meant his trying to grapple her only ended with him being cut up, and she was too close for Sholl to attack; his martial prowess would leave him cubed in an instant against her, and his ranged attacks all had an area of effect that couldn’t be risked.

A shadow suddenly loomed over Sholl.

“Always kill the healer you say?”

Sholl hadn’t prepared his blade, instead he held a beam in the hopes that Dawn would move far enough away that he could shoot between them and force more distance.

He tried to turn it on Harlan, but a massive paw enhanced with gravity sent his hand downward.

The city shook as the beam exploded underground, and Harlan next attacked by smashing Sholl’s chest.

20x gravity was enough to make him fall to the ground, but blows from Harlan at 20x gravity were enough that he was forced to use his healing on himself after every strike just to prevent from dying.

Gunfire from the rubble forced Harlan to stop.

The Fingers had not come alone, and the Cast they brought with them had now finished their part of the mission, so returned to support the Fingers.

Harlan wasn’t really that bothered by the bullets, his armor and flesh together meant that they were unable to cause real damage, but he had been startled, not quite sure of any damage they might be able to inflict.

Dawn had no such compunction, she was confident in the armor Harlan made for her being able to stop the bullets, and a little bit of gravity magic to make her heavier, a reverse hover as it was, meant that the impact of the bullets didn’t knock her off balance much.

Yet still, not being knocked off balance much meant that there was still a small imbalance.

Helik took advantage and finally got the distance that he wanted.

Keeping Dawn away now that he had space was much simpler than fighting her, walls of ice from him striking objects meant she couldn’t close the distance as she had before, and when she tried to use fire against it, the ice only grew colder and harder.

From the stairs of the mansion one of the men yelled that they got it.

Harlan feared what ‘it’ meant, as he saw the man holding nothing.

But with the announcement, Helik rushed to grab Sholl.

Harlan tried to swipe down at him, but Helik flipped, Harlan’s paw only sped up the spinning axe kick that split his arm down the middle.

With his feet back on the ground, Helik used a double palm strike to knock Harlan away from Sholl.

Dawn knew that if it became a two on one again that she was going to lose, so she chose to first help Harlan out of the rubble, pouring a tonic down his throat.

Dawn rode Harlan towards the two, she knew he was much faster than her so far as distance covered.

At the gate they saw Darrath, bleeding from his head, and slung over the shoulder of one of the Cast.

Both of them felt the fury of the other, their hate bled through their connection as they rushed forward, Harlan destroying his legs with a fire-imbibed jump, yet Helik was prepared, and a wall of ice rose up and caught him at the waist, the fire burning in him from inhaling the void mist only strengthened the magic.

What he wasn’t prepared for was Dawn to jump off of Harlan and destroy her own legs as well as damage her son’s body with her jump.

At the speed she was moving, with Harlan’s femur blade, and with fire imbibing, she should’ve cleaved him from shoulder to hip, splitting Sholl’s head like a watermelon as she did.

Yet with Sholl’s rapid healing of others, her blade became stuck in the Finger.

Thrown off balance, Helik struck her in the chest, caving it in and sending her flying back towards Harlan.

Harlan saw them flee, Darrath under Helik’s arm just like Sholl, Dawn’s blade still sticking out of his chest.

Yet trapped in ice, with his mother seemingly dying in front of him, Harlan forced himself.

He pushed against the ice, he was frozen, and he couldn’t get out.

But he pushed and pushed, then he threw up from the pain of what he was doing.

Harlan’s icy midsection started to break apart, he clawed at his own body, cutting himself free while being careful to not sever his spine and paralyze himself.

With his organs trailing behind him, he crawled his upper body to Dawn, and put as much of a general healing spell as he could into her before he blacked out.

An adrenaline high and pain blocking spells only got someone so far.