Harlan kept teaching the Cerast for a week, and each day he made more Others, and these Others conquered more and more of the stripe.

They did this partly to conquer the land and completely remove all Castian presence, but also to learn how to fight together.

When Harlan fought alongside Bartholomew, he felt something, a binding of them, a kinship.

Rarely did he get to fight alongside someone who was physically strong like him, and when he thought back to those moments, he couldn’t help but feel exhilarated.

He was more often than not a solo fighter even when he was fighting in a group.

The two Harlan’s were part of the way through a siege when a grand wizard stepped onto the battlefield.

“DEMONS OF FOMORIA, I SHALL NOT ALLOW ANOTHER CITY TO BE-”

They skipped around, left and right, up and down, making it nearly impossible to figure out the trajectory of their next attack.

Seeing that they had no intention of conversing or listening to his speech, he let out chasing bolts, ones who locked to their target and refused to stop until they reached their target or ran out of mana.

For the most part, they seemed to ignore the beams, simply opening gates to move around the battlefield and continue killing the soldiers to break their lines.

The Grand Wizard only became more and more annoyed as his attacks, ones that gave him some manner of fame, were ignored by what he considered to be children.

He flew through the air towards them, firing off more and more of these bolts as he did, making them come at the men from odd angles.

After another 10 minutes, they were absolutely sure that they had what they needed.

One of the Others opened a gate to get them far from the latest set of bolts, then the other opened another gate and stepped through, but let the gate itself open.

The two men joined hands and cast the chasing bolts, which flew from both sides of the man, then with the gate recharged, they repeated the spell again, this time from his sides.

Before long the man had to entirely focus on defending himself from all angles.

Eventually, one of the bolts struck the man, and when electricity coursed through his body, another gate opened.

The man blasted the Other with a spell that he kept despite having been hit with a shock, a common way for a mage to lose focus on a held spell, but while he took the Other’s arm and much of his chest off, it didn’t save him, as another gate opened at his back.

With his finger acting as a stinger he pumped a paralyzing agent into the men along with a metabolizing spell..

“Go fix your arm.”

“It’s weird.”

“Which part?”

“Fighting alongside myself.”

“But we love it.”

“That we do.”

The Other went down to one of the bodies and subsumed it.

While he was on the ground, he saw a young boy under some rubble, he had been caught up in the attack.

Harlan checked if he was alive, and shockingly he was, though barely.

The collapsed wall crushed both of his legs, and there was quite a bit of blood on the ground.

Harlan quickly, but carefully, lifted the stone wall and pulled the boy out.

When Harlan lifted the wall, he found another body.

He subsumed a few more bodies to grant the boy a full heal at little cost to either party, and he woke up quickly after that.

He screamed for his mother, but Harlan turned away from the crying boy.

No war was without cost, all he could do was try to minimize the damage.

The wizard was still alive, that was one lesson they wouldn’t need to be taught again.

One of them had managed to link their life to their home, and when they died, their research material, including the slaves and assistants that helped them, were all killed in the fire that began the moment the man’s heart was torn from his body.

The Others approached the home of the grand wizard and checked the arrays.

For all they knew that one man was just particularly good at that kind of magic, but that wasn’t a risk they were going to take.

Only once they had broken into every room and hidden room did they then cut off the man’s head.

One of the Others went outside with it and used it as an example.

If they could kill the local grand wizard, then how would those lesser soldiers fare?

The original, or prime, Harlan, was at home, going over materials gained from the other wizards.

Alongside him was Carmilla.

“I expected much more from them. The way people spoke of the others, a grand wizard should be able to make life and bend reality far more than this.”

“The legends of old are not baseless, but they are legends. There is no rank higher than a grand wizard unless they grant it to themselves.”

“The gap between a low and high grade wizard is quite large then?”

“Yes. But not all of this is useless. Here is a spell for aging whiskey and other alcohols. It seems inefficient, but useful.”

“Funny. When I was taken from my family, there was a boy who had the ability to instantly turn things alcoholic. I never found out the limits it had, but then again, he was removed from the program when I beat his jaw off of him in a riot.”

“A harsh upbringing.”

“No, the first 11 years of my life were fine. A loving mother and father, three sisters and an uncle that I adored, a slow farm life without danger.”

“There is a minor question that I will ask. When I spoke with that living shadow, when you were in a coma within The Sandsea, he said that he had been expressly told not to hurt me, and that you were the reason why.”

“You remind me of my aunt by marriage, Countess Cimmeria Blackstone.”

“In what way?”

“You are both powerful women with rather straightforward attitudes, but who are not above deception and trickery. When I first met the woman, years before she married my uncle, I beat her son rather fiercely in a fight. He was years older than me, but he had let himself grow weak, he lacked the will to be a fighter.

Yet while I was promised a chance to put him fully in his place, I was held back by her, denied what I was promised.”

“That story would reflect rather poorly on me then, would it not?”

“The reason why she did what she did was because she couldn’t bring herself to punish her son in a way that would make him stop being a pest towards women. I get the feeling that you would do anything for Camilla, and I am warning you that she is spoiled. Correct that before it becomes a real issue.”

“As a father for a boy who was not yours and for only a few months, you seem to have a rather solid grasp on how I should be raising my daughter.”

Her voice was filled with venom.

“Just because we were given a shit lot in life doesn’t mean we should overcorrect with our children.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

“I’d rather you didn’t quote that book to me.”

“The Reino we both know is not the same as the other, but neither of us like them, and yet we should be able to understand that some lessons of theirs, in context or not, are good.”

Harlan grabbed another one of the boxes from the shelf and started to lay its contents on the table.

“Why do you hate men?”

“Is that an appropriate conversation for this moment?”

“I have often been accused of having poor social skills, of asking wrong questions because of that, but I know what I am asking, and I don’t think that there is a good time to ask.”

“Why do you hate rapists so much?”

“Because I have a mother and three sisters, and if anything happened to them, I’d kill the man who did it regardless of who it was. That son of the countess, I thought for well over a year of ways to kill him and get away with it. All he did was uncomfortably touch my sisters and try to seduce them.

I would do the same for any of my friends.”

“The details do not matter. But I’ve had far too many encounters with men who have abused women and cultures where this is what they consider to be the natural order.”

“1600 years is a very long life to see a great deal of terrible things be done. I just wanted to know that it wasn’t something which was stupid.”

“Did you think I’d have a foolish reason for how I am?”

“It was always possible that you could have an irrational hate.”

“You are quite poor at speaking with women.”

“That you are a woman matters little to my answer to your question.”

“Ah, you would claim that you treat everyone the same? The great and equitable King Fomoria.”

Her tone was becoming heated.

“I did not say that I treat everyone the same, I said that in this specific instance, you being a woman doesn’t change how I answered that question.

That I touched some nerve is my mistake, I intended no offense. But do not talk to me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m a stupid child, or like I made some ridiculous statement. I can see that the subject upsets you, so I will avoid it in the future.”

She returned to their work, and their talking became professional, cold, impersonal.

There was a knock on the door.

Harlan used skip to open the door, pull Mercedes inside, and then close it in a second.

“Yes?”

“Colten called to say that a Castian force attempted to attack the city.”

“What are the casualties?”

“Three, one from friendly fire, two from accidental weapon discharge. A soldier tried to clean the barrel of one of the mounted guns after the battle without checking if there was a round in it and the other soldier who was cleaning the gun pulled the trigger, killing him before a healer could get to him.”

“Is that one both discharge and friendly fire?”

“No, that was counted as just accidental. The other was using one of the shotguns and far underestimated the recoil. From what he said, the weapon flew back with enough force that it smashed the man’s head, and he died before a healer could arrive.”

“Let me guess, the last one also died before a healer could arrive.”

“Yes. That is why I came here. I am going to suggest that you make golems to teach healing and send them there. The former frontiersmen and women were magically weak, relying more on potions and standard medicines rather than proper healers.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I will be making an Other later today, that one will go there to New Kingdom and start a class, he can train the healers who he finds are best suited for it and leave the other for golem instruction. And are they not issued helmets?”

“Would you like to hear his report on the battle itself? That man failed to wear his helmet.”

“Have it written and put in my office, I will read it later. And I will have Colten put forth more effort into making his men wear their equipment properly.”

“Very well.”

Mercedes showed herself out and the pair went back to looking over the research material.

When it was once again just them in the room, Carmilla chuckled to herself.

“What?”

“Camilla was rather upset when she heard that you made Mercedes your consort.”

“When I last saw her there was an air of jealousy. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now.”

“You rejected her, nobody has ever done that. That you then went with Viviane, then Mercedes, all without asking for Camilla’s hand once, it stung at her pride.”

“I can’t imagine there have been many men pursuing her in the first place, considering you are her mother.”

“You would be rather surprised then. Kings have sent their heirs hundreds or even thousands of miles to ask for her hand in marriage.”

“She is only the fourth most beautiful woman I’ve seen.”

Carmilla burst into laughter.

“Really? Who are the others?”

“My former fiance Adina, the agent of The Darkness who gave me rice and a mimic tree branch, Marigold.”

“In that order?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

She went back to looking over the papers.

Hours passed and Carmilla went home with boxes of copied papers.

Many of the things which they looked over weren’t relevant, and in some cases, they were problems that Halran already had the solution to.

As he was getting ready to make another Other, Xol appeared.

“Oh, is the next one done?”

“Yes, but there is something else.”

He pulled a scroll from his robe.

“Your other self was part of this research, and now that I have it, I have decided that you deserve it as well.”

Harlan opened it up and read it, he laughed as he burned it.

“It really was that easy, I’m such an idiot. Why didn’t I think about that, of course the structure of the blood crystal itself was the issue with the gems failing to contain much mana beyond what was already in the blood. Oh the things I can do with this.”

“Ominous.”

“You seem to mention it when I say something ominous fairly often.”

Xol shrugged.

“I came here for blood.”

“As in?”

“Literal blood, from you, and bones too. I’d like to study your body and understand how the weapon sigil has interfaced with you and if it has affected you genetically.”

“What does that mean?”

“If you were to impregnate a woman with the sigil active, I want to know if it would change the baby.”

“I hope this is for a good reason.”

“I find it interesting.”

“Very well. We can go to my lab, I was just going to make an Other, and if you bring that Other here I can begin to devour my mind.”

He felt drained doing so many things back to back, so he was going to take a little extra time to subsume his Otherself and rest.

Harlan looked through his eyes.

“What is it this week?”

“Imbibing. I find it rather interesting that you’ve done so little with it, you found out that you can use the advanced elements for it, but you failed to capitalize on it.”

“I have so many things I’m trying to do that it fell by the wayside. When I fail to use it, I end up losing a body more often than not.”

“Show me blood imbibing.”

Harlan did as asked, but it wasn’t one that he had tried before.

He began bleeding from every orifice, he felt his body turning to liquid.

Xol moved him to a tub.

The pain was excruciating, for a little bit at least, but once his nerves were completely gone, and he was an amorphous pile of gore, he didn’t feel anything, he didn’t see anything.

Madness quickly set in as he lost all of his senses.

He awoke again in the tub.

As soon as he felt that he had fingers again he pulled himself up, he felt like he was drowning in his own skin.

“HOW LONG.”

“An hour.”

“IT TOOK YOU THAT LONG TO HELP ME?”

“Stop shouting. I had the spell in a minute, it took an hour to figure out if it was going to kill you or not.”

Harlan breathed in and out with a terrified pace and curled into the fetal position inside of the porcelain.

“Why did you have a tub here already?”

“I know it was possible that this could happen.”

“AND YOU-”

Harlan took a deep breath.

“And you did it anyway?”

“I can’t imbibe, something about how my soul interacts with my physical form distorts the ability.

So I can’t really research it without you.”

“Can’t you just make some other life form that can imbibe? Or find a person to be your test subject?”

“But I did find one.”

“I should’ve expected that. Were you normal in your original life? Is that why you act this way?”

“No. I was both abnormal then, and I have changed a lot since I came here. I have lost thousands of families, been abused by them, I’ve lived lives that lasted days, weeks, months, all where I have never been given the chance to survive. When I had power, I was already beyond the ability to bond with the fleeting lives of mortals. I have existed beyond the cycle of souls, beyond morality and mortality, for far too long.”

Harlan saw the fire in Xol’s sockets dim.

When the flames lit up once more, Xol resumed as if nothing had happened.

“What did you see when you turned into gore?”

“Nothing, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see, it felt like years were passing and I didn’t know how to deal with any of it.”

“Odd, imbibing with an advanced element should give you some insight into the magic itself and some factor of reality.”

“What? I don’t think I got any of that with my other imbibes.”

“Use crystal, tell me what you feel.”

Harlan did as asked.

Crystal imbibing hardened his flesh, but it wasn’t really that useful, as it also made him brittle and restricted him from making fast movements.

The only real advantage was that his crystalized form was very, very sharp.

“So?”

“I don’t feel anything special. It is actually somewhat hard to see because my eyes are acting like lenses, splitting my vision or magnifying it, and I can’t control it.”

“Hmm… Stay very still.”

“What are you-”

Harlan saw the light mana split, and the pure light shot forth impossibly fast.

Yet instead of a hole being put through him, the light just split and splintered.

He dared not speak for fear that the movement would change the beam's path and somehow kill him.

Xol eventually turned the lightshow off.

“Did you feel anything there?”

“No, and what exactly was that?”

“Pure light mana carries no heat or destructive nature, nor does it have mass. It is nothing but light. It is completely safe unless I add something to it.”

“So it’s useless?”

“No, pure light can pierce any shadow, and it has theoretically infinite range. It is basically a very costly but powerful flashlight.”

“What is a flashlight?”

“A piece of technology from my world. It used bulbs and lenses to project a beam of light.”

“Neat. Do you understand how they worked?”

“Yes.”

“Can you-”

“No. Making them here would be entirely pointless. Soulsmithing lets you make your own flashlight that never needs to be recharged, and requires no batteries. You do know what a battery is, yes?”

“Of course, mana batteries are an old technology that powered some things in the old empire. Nobody really knows how they worked and none of the ones we’ve found ever did anything, but we have texts that mention them.”

“They worked by containing human souls, not much unlike your own soulsmithed mana gems.”

“How?”

“Soul magic is a favorite of Fae. Don’t you think it is odd that orcs were created in an era where modern magic didn’t yet exist? Even modern soul magic isn’t capable of such a thing?”

“I think I could do it if I wanted.”

“No, no you could not. Not yet at least. Your abominations aren’t that far from what an orc is, but it is the devil in the details that makes all the difference. I- Stop distracting me. Now, I’m going to move us.”

Harlan was in the crystal cave that he was in years ago when he became a champion and was taken away by Xol and Marigold.

His feet were firmly on the massive crystals, but he still felt nothing.

“How very odd. Back to the tub then.”

And so they returned to the odd training area, a platform that seemed to be floating inside of a giant run down mine.

Where they were wasn’t clear, as Harlan’s location finding spells gave contradictory readings, implying that they were inside of a small world outside of normal space, like Xol’s home or the training camp used by the academy.

“I don’t want to do that.”

“So? If you want to enter the final stage of magehood, to know your second truth, or rather, understanding, the truth of knowledge rather than wisdom, then do this. All knowledge will get you closer to that truth.”

“Can’t I learn something else?”

“You could. But I’ve never known you as one to step away from a fight, nor one who shields his eyes from a harsh reality.”

Harlan sighed.

“Fine. But pull me out after a minute, not any later.”

“Deal.”

Harlan sat in the tub naked and he felt his being break down, the flesh fell from his bones and his eyes melted out of his skull, eventually, even his skeleton melted.

This time, when he expected this feeling, he didn’t panic, and this time, his nerves were the absolute first thing that turned into goo, letting him barely feel it compared to the first time.

He couldn’t understand what he was seeing, millions if not billions of organisms, like giant larvae with dozens of limbs, long rectangular worms with flat bodies, and something that seemed inorganic, a helix that stretched on into seeming infinity.

He woke up again.

“I saw monsters, but they seemed to just float around in the red, and I saw an endless tower, a bound helix, like a ladder.”

“Did you see something like this?”

Xol made a projection of a round object, concave on both sides.

“Yes.”

“Good, then I was right. I believe your sense turned completely inward and what you are seeing are a variety of microorganisms that live in your body. What I showed you was a blood platelet. And that helix ladder I believe is DNA. That you were small enough to see a strand of DNA is very strange to me. How big were the other things you saw?”

“The monsters were maybe as big as my forearm, the strand was like a piece of hair.”

“Hmm… I wonder if you don’t have any real sense of scale, or if your sense perceives these things as improper sizes to make them easier to fathom. A blood platelet should be thousands of times larger than that helix.”

“I don’t know.”

“Then we can continue.”

Harlan would die several times that week, but inside of that small world, Xol could prevent the soul from dissipating and reconstruct his body as if nothing happened.

It didn’t make it any more pleasant when he used lightning imbibing and became a literal bolt of lighting that was sucked into a glass sphere Xol set up.

The time between his body becoming an element and his nerves shutting down as they converted into that element was small, but with his sense of time becoming so fast due to the imbibing, that moment seemed to last hours.

Though Harlan did think that he looked pretty, and wanted to recreate the ball of lighting, just, without him as the lightning.

Back in flesh, Harlan vomited.

“We can mark lightning as a non-starter then.”

“What are you actually looking for?”

“Some advanced elements seem to turn you into that element, and others just give you some other ability.

You showed me what sound is like, it lets you amplify and dampen vibration.

What you call sound magic is more accurately vibration magic, so that makes sense to me, and it doesn’t turn you into a vibration or a soundwave.

But void just turns you into something like Coronach, your body is entirely broken down and replaced by that element. Why some of them do this and not others doesn’t seem to have clear rules.”

“I am not like him, I’m a blob that can’t shape into anything more than a moment and I eat away at everything around me.”

“Coronach is covered in a thin film, that is what he actually controls to shape himself. Think of him like a sausage.”

Harlan and Xol both laughed.

“I think I would’ve noticed that.”

“You think that, do you? I bet you think void is just one element as well, don’t you?”

“What does that mean?”

“Void here within the manasphere refers to the element of absence, the creation of nothingness by way of converting that something into immaterial matter. But outside of the grasp of the planet you find more void, what we call space. That is not nothing either, but it is close enough for most people that we use the term, just like an empty jar is still full of air.”

“Alright, what’s next? Or are you going to dump something else on me to show how much more you know and make me sound like an idiot.”

“Acid.”

Harlan sighed.

It was not a pleasant experience.

With the weapon sigil active however, he could handle the pain.

But having acid blood and spit wasn’t that useful to him. If he wanted to make acid in his body, he could already do that with shifting, and his stomach acid could melt through metals as it was.

It wasn’t able to do it quickly, but it could do it.

Back in reality, Harlan staggered out of the gate leading out of his lab and into his bed, the sun was entirely set, he spent much more time than he realized there.

“You are lucky that nothing serious happened while you were gone.”

“I’m tired, I feel like shit. These memories are painful.”

“Your family?”

“No, I meant it literally. I’m learning advanced imbibing, and I remember how it feels to have my body break down and in different ways. The first time is always the worst, but after that the body seems to understand what is coming and the nerves transform first.”

“How about we do something to make you feel better then?”

“I could use a meal.”

She rolled over and then straddled him, her clothes slipping off like a living liquid.

“Oh, you meant that.”

“I do.”

Mercedes was right, it did take his mind off of it.