Harlan, not getting any real rest, decided to take a soak in the bathtub.

The water was hot, it would scald almost anyone else, but to him, it felt just right.

In that water he finally got some sleep.

He was there at a farm.

He looked down, these hands were not his.

“Load up the last crates.”

“Oh, right, sorry.”

He seemed to be a young man, and the one who was ordering him was an older woman.

“I’ll go get Missy while you do that.”

He loaded up the few crates of apples and sacks of potatoes that were left there on the ground.

Harlan felt weak, he felt… human.

The woman came out with a little girl, no older than nine.

“Daddy.”

She ran up to him and jumped, Harlan caught her in his arms.

“Don’t do that, you are getting too big, you’ll hurt your father one of these days.”

“It’s fine, really.”

The woman shook her head, scolding him silently that he shouldn’t let her get what she wants just because she’s a child.

“I can go today?”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

The woman tapped her foot angrily.

“Really? Grandma said that you would say no?”

“Anything for you baby girl.”

He didn’t quite get it, was this a happy dream?

Was he just fantasizing about a simpler life with his daughter?

The woman took the reins from him, he clearly didn’t know where he was going.

His daughter sat on his lap.

“What is the city like?”

“It is loud, and smelly. But it is also full of people, more things than you’ve ever seen before. Stay close to your grandmother and I.”

“Did you and mama ever go to the city?”

The woman had a sullen look on her face.

“Yes.”

“What did she look like?”

He felt his chest tighten, this dream was clearly not happy, there was something else happening here.

“She looked like you, but older. She was the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“Will I be pretty when I’m bigger?”

“Of course.”

“Can I be a soldier like you?”

“NO.”

The woman yelled.

“You cannot be a soldier, they are…”

“But mommy was a soldier, she fought all the bad men, and the monsters. And-”

“And then the worst monster of them all killed her, and he’s still roaming around unpunished.”

They all went quiet.

For the very long ride to the city, Harlan couldn’t help but examine his body.

He found a tattoo on his chest, from the skull and the blade, he assumed he could’ve been a soldier or a mercenary like his wife.

In the back of the wagon, within his reach, he also found a blade and matching shield, military issue, mundane.

If he was a soldier here, then he was low ranked, probably served his term, bought out of it.

If he had been kicked out, they wouldn’t let him keep the equipment.

He heard rustling in the woods, saw the shadows moving.

“Baby, get in the back, between the crates, and don’t come out until I say so.”

“But-”

“Now.”

He lifted the young girl from his lap and set her in the wagon.

Then there was the waiting.

The woman knew what was happening, and tried to make it seem like nothing was going on.

The forest was quiet, the tension was in the air, the birds and predators had gone silent.

Everyone knew what was going to happen, and they just waited.

“Stop the cart.”

“But-”

“Mother.”

10 men stepped from the woods.

“Leave the cart, no need to die.”

Harlan stepped down, but not before he grabbed the sword.

He didn’t have nearly enough experience fighting with a shield, he was a two handed man.

“Don’t fight, we’ll just walk.”

“Listen to your mother, boy.”

“Walk away.”

“Harry, please, don’t.”

“Wait with Missy.”

“Well, we were gonna just kill you both anyway.”

“Both implies two.”

“The girl is young, shouldn’t be hard to find a buyer, if not, the men can-”

“I know, I know what you are going to say, there is no need for her to hear that.”

The bandits surrounded him, but he felt calm.

It wasn’t just that he was in a dream and he knew that this wasn’t a real threat, but it was also that even in this weaker body, he still remembered everything that Breken taught him.

Even a dozen bandits shouldn’t be enough to get past him.

The first of them rushed in a triangle pattern, then the second wave did the same.

These men were used to this, a triangle meant that you needed to expose your sides and or back to at least one of them, and the second triangle doubled the threat.

The other four men stood by to prevent Harlan from escaping the encirclement.

He wasn’t planning to let them get all the way in, and he rushed one of the men.

Harlan deflected the blade, turning it around as he did and slipping past the bandits sword.

When he passed the man, his sword found its way to the bandits throat.

He felt the heat as the man’s arterial spray hit him.

Compared to everything else in the dream, it was the most real feeling there.

The man dropped his blade and tried to prevent himself from bleeding out.

Harlan grabbed him from the back, tossing him at one of the other bandits.

Feint low, and when the man tries to go low, you kick dirt in his eyes.

He plunged a dagger he grabbed from the belt of the first man into the nape of the man’s neck from behind, steel passed through flesh and around the spine, hitting his brain.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

When he pulled it out, he tossed it in the same motion.

The man who deflected it expected Harlan to be the next target, and the man on his right did as well.

When Harlan went after him instead, he was too slow, he had readied himself to stab him in the side as he went after the other.

Harlan swung and deflected the blade, driving it into the ground, stepping on it as he did.

The other man went to stab him in the side, and Harlan leaned back, grabbing the man’s hand.

His sword was shorter than the others, either because he stole it from a smaller man, or because he liked the extra control it offered him.

The way that he put all of his force into the lunge made him discard the second option, he was an amateur, extra control was wasted on him.

Harlan grabbed the man’s hand and pulled him into his blade.

One thing that Breken had ensured Harlan got down, and was helped by his time learning human anatomy, was how to slide his blade between the segments of the spine.

If you stab wrong, it slips off, and while you may kill the man still, severing the cord makes one fall like a puppet with no strings, and they lose their grip.

When the man’s shortsword started to fall, Harlan let go of the hand, grabbed the blade, flipped it around, and stabbed the other man through the eye.

The others became afraid of going in.

“Alright, you made your point. We’ll just go on our way and-”

Harlan tossed the shortsword at the leader and rushed forward again.

Some of them started to flee, and it only made it easier.

He cut the backs of their legs.

There were major arteries that ran through it, it stopped them from running, and it made the others think that they could still help; their in a bid to keep down on weight because they were bandits who had to move around a lot, they had removed the plating from the backs of their legs.

His blade had dulled some.

Fat and blood and running it along the length of another sword wasn’t great for mundane metal.

So what should’ve been a clean decapitation instead ended up as 3/5ths of a decapitation.

One of the others rushed from around his back and stabbed forward.

Harlan couldn’t dodge, the man’s body as he fell with the blade in neck had thrown him off balance, he was far too used to swords that just cut or were stopped, not ones that got stuck.

He took the sword in the back, and instead of twisting, which risked more damage, he just got his blade unstuck and flipped it around, stabbing back where the man’s head should be.

He missed, but the man jumped straight back, pulling the sword out relatively cleanly, and it had missed his organs.

Harlan dodged the next blade from the front and with his blade still backwards, he bashed him with the pommel, shattering his orbital and knocking the eye out of its socket.

The man fell to the ground screaming.

He quickly grabbed the blade from the man who had been partly decapitated and pressed the blades to his front and back.

When two man tried to stab him, their blades glided along his, and he swung the one at his back, bringing it down on one man’s head.

He seized on the ground, the blade was stuck in his skull and wouldn’t easily come out, but the man’s brain was cut.

He attempted to repeat this on the other man, but he leaned back, and instead Harlan split his nose and jaw, knocking out a few teeth.

The leader tackled him.

Harlan braced the flat of his blade with his forearm as he laid on his back.

They struggled for only a short time before the man threw both of their arms up so he could safely go for a headbutt.

When he did, Harlan went for the throat.

He sunk his teeth in, and once he felt something harder, the tubes of the trachea, he pulled his head back.

The man’s blood drenched Harlan, and he pushed him off.

As he stood, he felt the pain from the stab wound.

He lost more blood than he thought.

He staggered over to the man who had his eye hanging out and put him down.

The man with the split nose had more cosmetic damage and he stood up.

“Please… please, just let me go.”

Harlan could feel another set of eyes on him, he had to kill this man before someone else showed up.

He rushed forward past the frightened and fumbled attempt at a defensive stance, and drove his blade at an upward angle into the man’s heart, between the gaps of his armor.

Harlan’s shoulder was pressed with the man’s as he held his blade and prevented him from flailing around.

He felt his hot blood pour down his chest and stain his tunic.

Once Harlan thought the man lost enough and didn’t have strength left to fight, he pushed him off and turned to see the other threat, only to see the look his daughter gave him.

He saw all of the blood and tears filled her eyes, he saw it, he saw that she loved and respected him, that she looked up to him, and that it was gone, she saw a monster in front of her.

He staggered over to the cart.

“Mom, get up here, drive.”

She crawled out of the back

“Just… go…”

“Your stomach, are you-”

“I will be fine, it is a flesh wound.”

He gave himself simple first aid, wrapping the wound tightly, but not too lightly.

He didn’t want to squeeze the wound and make it bleed, and it was better that it could breathe slightly.

He could hear Missy whimpering the entire way there.

“Baby, that, that is what a soldier does. Evil men attacked us, they would’ve killed us, so I killed them.”

“The last man… he wanted to leave, why did you-”

“I couldn’t let him go.”

“Why?”

“Because he was evil, and he would’ve just gone to hurt someone who couldn’t kill him.”

“He sounded so scared, he just wanted to run away.”

“He was right to be scared.”

“We’re going to be in Haldren soon. Missy, give your father a rag.”

“Did you say Haldren?”

He saw the mushroom cloud rise in the distance, he felt the slightest heat, and it was over, it was almost instant.

He tried to grab his daughter, to shield her in any way he could.

Harlan woke up in the tub, crying like an infant, and Adina rushed into the room.

“Harlan, honey, honey, are you alright?”

“I COULDN’T SAVE HER, I KILLED HER, IT’S MY FAULT, I DID IT.”

“Who? Who couldn't you save?”

“MISSY, SHE’S DEAD, AND SHE… she… I was dreaming, I just had a bad dream.”

Viviane had started crying in the other room, and they both moved.

“Get dressed first.”

Harlan dried himself off and then went back to the room, where a royal guard and soldiers had already burst into the room.

“Sir Fomoria, what happened? We heard screaming.”

“Just a nightmare, I’m fine, please, return to your positions.”

“Understood.”

Adina was rocking Vivi to calm her, but she just kept crying.

“What happened? Who is Missy?”

“I had a dream, I was a farmer, and I took my daughter with me to sell produce.

Along the way, bandits attacked, and she saw me kill a man who tried to flee. The look in her eyes, it’s burned into my mind, I can’t stop seeing it. Every ounce of respect she had faded away, she didn’t see me as her father, she saw me as just another murderer. Then… then we kept going. We got near Haldren, and I saw the blast, I felt the heat on my skin, and I saw her skin start to bubble and burn away as we all died.”

“It was just a dream, that isn’t going to happen, Vivi is safe, and we will always be safe with you.”

“Bullshit. Sepul, great and powerful archmage, and he couldn’t keep his family safe. The only one left is my half-sister, and he kept her from being assassinated by faking her death and hiding her from the world.

He has been alive long enough to make a lot of enemies, and it doesn’t matter that he stopped a thousand attempts, one got through, one of them is all that it took for him to end up bitter and alone.”

Harlan began weeping again.

“I don’t want that for our little girl, I don’t want to hide her, I don’t want to lie to her.

What will I tell her when she gets older? When she learns what I’ve done? How will she look at me then? Will she look like Missy did? I killed 50,000 people in Haldren, how many of them had relatives that could be plotting revenge right now? How many fathers lost their daughters that day?”

“You are just shook up, you aren’t fully awake, and the stress from the academy is eating away at you.

I didn’t want to say it before, but I can see it.”

Viviane just wouldn’t stop crying.

“Can I hold her?”

“Sure, fine.”

Her words and actions didn’t match, she hated giving her daughter away just as much as he did.

When Harlan grabbed her he felt it this time, his mind was too clouded by him wanting to pretend that it was clear before, but this time he knew, she had empathic abilities like him.

“You were sleeping last time I said this, but I promised that I would be better, I promised that I wouldn’t miss a second of her life, her first steps, her first words, any of it, because I was out there killing someone.

I promised when you were sleeping because I didn’t want you to hold me to this.”

“And now you want me to hold you to it.”

“If I became a better man now, I could explain things to her, I could say that I was evil, that I was wrong, but that I was also young, and I made mistakes. I hope that she understands that, and even if it is hard, she can forgive me for what I was.”

“This war is going to get worse before it gets better.”

“I know. I’m not saying that I won’t kill anyone, but with so much power, there are a lot of people I can avoid killing. I can rush down a field and slaughter a thousand men.”

Harlan activated his sigil and grew a stinger.

“But I could also hit them with a little bit of neurotoxin, and they wouldn’t move for hours.

I have killed so many because it is easy, because they deserve it, but there are so many more that didn’t need to die, that I could’ve just as easily spared, that someone else can judge.”

Harlan kissed Vivi on the forehead.

“I promise, when you are old enough to understand, I will be a better person, one not so quick to anger, one that can keep you safe, I promise I won’t just hide here, I will make sure that I have made this world better than the one that you were born into.”

She stopped fussing and fell back to sleep.

“Adina, bring me my sword.”

“Why do you-”

“Please.”

She grabbed it from the bedside, without anyone touching it, It was a normal blade, not the mantis like one that it was when he used it.

As he handed her their daughter, he grabbed his blade.

It didn’t shape itself into the mantis shape as normal, instead, it became a blade without an edge.

That wasn’t enough.

Harlan forced his will on the blade, casting out the darkness.

It turned bone white, the entire aura around it had changed.

He didn’t like using the word holy, it was something that he couldn’t help but think of as related to Reino, but that was the word that came to mind.

“I feel you in there. You are not living, but you are not without a mind.”

It couldn’t respond, but it gave off a feeling of acceptance.

Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t that anymore.

“You will be my blade of mercy.”

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

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“I’m sorry, I really am. But those weren’t exactly good guys we killed.”

“I know.”

“Harlan would’ve done the same thing.”

“Yeah, you are probably right. With my father dead, there are a lot of places that only we knew about that should be safe, but I don’t want to stay at any of them for more than a day.”

“It sounds like you could stand to get around faster.”

David drew his sword at the sudden voice, the woman who snuck up on them, but Parnell was frozen, he could smell her power, the wrongness that she exuded.