When Harlan started screaming, the Others understood why he did it, none of them liked what they had done, but they didn’t know the exact reason.

They hit him with shock spells until he passed out and then started the healing process, cutting off the burned layers of skin and then replacing it with good flesh.

The void flame burned deeply, and killed the flesh beyond normal, destroying the mana within it.

It could be healed, but it was simply easier for them to do it this way.

But, at the same time, Harlan should’ve abandoned this body from the start, he never needed to feel any of this pain.

The Other marshalls had gone back to their lands already, but the ones who were acting as his healers, they knew he wouldn’t wake up for a while, so they just stood around.

“Do we want to talk about what happened?”

“I think we all agree that talking to ourselves is a dangerous road to go down. We should find real people.”

“Do any of you struggle with that? Knowing that we aren’t really him? We might not even really be people? That we're born to die?”

“All things are born to die. Balor, Lugh, we wouldn’t consider them fundamentally different from what we are, but they are still people. Honestly, I find more comfort in knowing that I’m not him, I’m just me, another person, born of a person, and that we all share something that no one else can ever have.”

The Harlans all understood what he meant, each of them felt the pain of losing everyone just like their progenitor had, but they could find some solace in knowing that they weren’t him, that the expectations on them were so much lower, they they could live a life of their own if they wished.

But, they were all Harlan, they had his doubt, his guilt, his unwillingness to accept things.

Would it be right for any of them to have a wife? To have children? Could they even have children?

A split soul couldn’t split itself, but how did that effect pregnancy?

There was that part of them that wanted to know, but they didn’t want to subject some poor woman to being a test subject for them.

When Harlan woke up, he had one of the Others help him into bed, where the agent was already sleeping.

Neither of them wanted to bother with why, Harlan wanted to sleep, and the Other… he didn’t know what he wanted, he was just a reserve to be called on by the marshalls.

In the morning, before dawn had even begun, the agent was still sleeping, so Harlan tried to get out of bed in a gingerly manner.

But while the woman seemed to be a heavy sleeper, she instantly awoke when he lifted his sheet.

“Good morning.”

Harlan didn’t reply, he just sat at the edge of his bed.

“Hello? Did you go back to sleep?”

“What are you doing in my bed?”

“Your bed smells better.”

“If you let the maids in, they could-”

“I mean… your bed smells… like you.”

She put on an embarrassed face and voice, but she gave off no feeling.

“I don’t have any current desire to figure out why you put on facades like you do.”

“That was-”

“Rude? No, what is rude is you deciding to stay in my home but do nothing other than sleep and eat.

Why are you here? Did you annoy everyone else? Were they tired of taking care of a parasite?”

That last word, that finally got a reaction from her.

The agent made an ugly face, trying to hold back tears as she ran out of the room.

Harlan laid back down in bed, he didn’t feel like being up until he had a reason to be.

Then he remembered that he left Velvet back inside the veil.

He came out of the void gate and found he wasn’t the only person there.

He was a man of average height and build who seemed magically weak, which made it odd that he would be at Castle Fomoria, since one couldn’t even open the door without shifting the enchanted concrete.

“Who are you?”

“I’m a courier from the academy, and I have a package for Archmage Changeling.”

Harlan looked at it with enhanced mana vision through a third eye, noticing the anti-magic aura around the box.

Harlan suddenly felt very awake, and the man noticed, opening the box and setting off the bomb.

The possessed courier was reduced to a red mist and Harlan, not fast enough to stop the man, instead focused on skipping back and away from the bomb.

Though he had technically gotten out of the blast radius before it struck him, an odd interaction between time manipulation and the anti-magic of the crystal caused him to still lose a layer of skin from his face, but at least he avoided the worst of it.

The spirit was gone before Harlan could get close enough to try and trap it.

When Harlan, the other Harlan, woke up and rushed outside, he found Fomoria using his claws to scrape away chunks of his flesh that were contaminated.

Were it not for his mind and horns being so recognizable, Harlan would’ve attacked him outright.

Tiamat arrived and Harlan had to tell her to go back to the inland sea while he helped Fomoria to get himself clean.

With his face regrown, he spoke.

“There was a man here, I assume Nulson. He had a package, when I realized what he was, or he realized who I was, he set it off to avoid capture.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“He claimed to be from the academy. Ask Hirum if he is missing a courier.”

“Let’s get you inside.”

“I am just here because I forgot Velvet here.”

“Right… Velvet…”

“What happened? Is he alright?”

“We’ll see how long he lasts.”

The pair went through the halls, locking onto Velvet’s mind.

When they reached the room, Harlan stopped Fomoria.

“They are still sleeping.”

“They?”

Fomoria looked at the other mind, and noticed whose room they were outside of.

“He and Amber?”

“Just wait, talk to him before you-”

“I’m happy for them, Amber has had issues finding men for a long time, and Velvet… he hasn’t told me why he acts the way he does. Why would you assume I’d beat him to death with my bare hands for this?”

“Because you could’ve said that you wouldn’t do anything, and I can see the shadows darkening.”

“Hmm… I am probably just upset about… Just call me when they wake up so I can bring him back to his kingdom.”

“You said that you resented me before, is that why Amber possibly finding a partner has you upset?

I thought you found-”

“I said I was seeing about that, and I may have fucked it up, because that is what I am.”

“We aren’t fuck ups. We’re just… different, and sometimes that makes us incompatible with-”

“We’re fuck ups.”

Fomoria stepped through his void gate, but Harlan did as well.

The agent looked confused at two men standing in Harlan’s room, and that the one she knew as Harlan was trying to shove the other through a void gate.

“Get back there.”

“No, I want to help.”

“I think you’ve done enough as is, now don’t make me actually try.”

She watched them both, and saw that the smaller Harlan was struggling greatly to avoid being tossed through.

Fomoria swept the legs of his other half and pushed him through the void gate, breaking several of his ribs in the process.

He sighed and closed the gate before he could go back through.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-”

“I have fun when others view me as mysterious, so I act strangely. I don’t have a name, that is why I have never told you. I am sorry.”

Harlan sighed again.

“Right now, I just don’t care. I’m going to sleep until I get a call to pick up Velvet.”

“But don’t you want to know about-”

“Why are you even here? Did she send you for a reason?”

“I… nevermind, why don’t you just go to sleep.”

“Of course, go back to your favorite face.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Harlan slipped out of his armor and into bed.

“We can… speak in the morning then?”

“Are you going to tell me anything? Because I have had enough of dealing with other people's problems for now. Be open or don’t bother.”

She returned in the morning.

“You may call me Anon.”

Harlan was still tired.

“What?”

“I was raised by a Void Panther. I don’t read well. I won’t eat around others because I have poor table manners. My family was killed the day before I got here by parasites.”

“That’s enough.”

“You said you wanted me to be open, and from what others tell me, that means to reveal secrets.”

“I was angry last night, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“The Darkness told me to be with you, because you are lonely, and I need someone to watch me.”

“Watch you for what?”

“I don’t… do well around people, if I don’t have someone telling me what to do.”

“Is that why you were so normal before?”

“Mother told me how to understand people, to put up faces. What is your real face?”

“A man who will do what is needed.”

“Hmm…”

She finally let him eat with her, and though it offended her, he taught her how to eat around others.

She was smart, picking things up easily, but as she said, she didn’t read well, and needed to be taught with examples and explanations that could be simplified for her.

Harlan got the call, and went to get Velvet.

When he arrived, Dahlia and other Unseen instantly pulled out their weapons.

“KING FOMORIA, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR-”

“Do any of you honestly think that you can stop me from leaving if I want to? And you have no authority, here in the NLZ anyway.”

Harlan came outside to mediate before King Fomoria started making more examples of hierarchy.

“Dahlia, you know that you can’t arrest him.”

“He killed 60,000 soldiers of Ragne.”

They all noticed him flinch at the number.

“So you really are him? Unseen, stand down. King Fomoria, you cannot enter Ragne, and if you do, I will gather people who can take you down.”

“It almost sounds like you want to get people killed.”

Before Dahlia could reply, Harlan stepped in front of them.

“ENOUGH.”

His voice shook the ground, but each of the Unseen were enhanced, noises above a certain point were filtered out to prevent damage by having a hard flap of cartilage cover the ear canal.

“Fomoria, get King Velvet and leave, Dahlia, continue collecting samples.”

Fomoria entered the home and went to Amber’s room.

He wanted to just open the door, but he was worried what he might see, so he knocked.

“Come in.”

When Harlan stepped in, Velvet noticed how his fingers twitched, and he hid behind Amber.

“Wait wait wait wait.”

“What?”

“Don’t hit me.”

“I’m not, I’m just here to take you home. Amber, I assume that there isn’t a problem with him that would require me to beat him?”

“Don’t beat him to death.”

“There is wiggle room in that statement.”

“I just slept with him because we are about to be separated by thousands of miles and a giant wall of deadly fog.”

Velvet seemed offended.

“Come on, it isn’t like that, right? Last night, I thought-”

“Thought what? You don’t seem like a bad guy, and Harlan… Fomoria, trusts you enough to leave you here with us, but we can’t exactly be together, the distance is too much.”

“Velvet, step outside, I want to talk with my sister.”

The room was still sparse, little more than a bed with a chest at the end and a desk with a chair.

So, he laid down on the bed, and she laid next to him, staring at the ceiling.

“Alright, what?”

“Do you feel attraction towards him?”

“Is this jealousy? Or envy? I get the two mixed up.”

“Amber, I know that you haven’t had luck with men. If you want to be with him, just tell me, I’ll bring him here whenever you want.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just bring me over there? So I don’t need to go through Harlan to get to you to then get to Velvet?”

Fomoria went silent, and he closed his eyes.

“I said-”

“I know, I heard you. But could you really go? Leave mom, dad, Sam and Liat, everyone.”

“That isn’t the real reason you don’t want me to come. You can come and go as you please already.”

“I have enough targets around me. Even with the lull in the war, I don’t know if I could keep you safe when it starts up again.”

“I’m not a child, I graduated the academy before you did, and I’m already enhanced, and-”

“Talk with mom and dad, talk with Harlan, whoever you should talk to. I’ll be back in a week, if you still want to come, then I will bring you, I’ll have a room ready for you in my home.

But, there is one more thing, something important that I haven’t mentioned. I… I remade Haldren.”

“You rebuilt the city?”

“No, a bomb.”

Amber was clearly conflicted, and it was 10 minutes before she said anything.

“Why?”

“They kidnapped my son, killed the woman I was in a relationship with, I… I felt that I had to make an example, that I had to make sure they never thought that they could get away with something like that again.”

“Did it help? Did you rescue him?”

“I did, and he was unharmed, but it was over 100,000 in the city, tens of thousands more along the coast, and then millions in the conquest after. If you come, you will be party to what comes next, to the rest of my war.”

“Your son, is he… your’s?”

“Periwinkle made a new race, and when I went to her, to ask about magic to help keep my people fed, she gave me one of them, asked that I watch him, so he could learn how to lead, and one day he would return to her for the sake of his race. He isn’t with me anymore, I sent him and Dawn away, back to Periwinkle, because I couldn’t risk them, because I knew that every terrible thing I did wouldn’t be enough, that I would lose myself if I lost them.”

“Even if Velvet and I don’t work out, I think that I want to be with you.”

“I’m sorry, but you don’t mean that-”

She punched his arm.

“I meant that I want to be around you. Fuck, I can’t imagine you and I.”

Harlan sighed in relief.

“Still, wait a week, and you can see about rounding up Sam and Liat.”

“See you in a week then.”

Harlan went outside and made sure that Velvet didn’t leave anything behind, but they didn’t go back to Velvet immediately.

They found themselves on a mountaintop; fear ran through the king of luxury.

“Hey, I didn’t do anything that she didn’t-”

“If I was going to kill you, there wouldn’t be a discussion, I would’ve just dumped your body in the ocean.

Amber may be coming out here.”

“Wow, that’s great, I-”

“I just wanted to warn you, whatever it is that you have with your higher ups, the merchants that really lead your nation, if it blows back on Amber, I’m going to start killing people.”

Velvet narrowed his eyes at Harlan.

“What do you mean? I don’t have any problems with-”

“I went to the library of Redhaven, found books that came from Velvet, brought there by immigrants, and they detailed the kings of the past. It wasn’t hard to figure out what is going on.

Each king is put on the throne by the king before them, even if there wasn’t any reason for why one ruler would want that person there. The children of these rulers always died, often under strange circumstances. And I’ve already dealt with Plest, they are tight knit and pushing for power constantly, that they exist in every level of your government and those same people are related to the merchants alliance makes it clear that-”

Velvet stared wide eyed.

“I didn’t think that… well…”

“I have kept up the appearance of ignorance, that I am a king who only knows power, not policy, but I know that I cannot remain that way. My research into magic is being done by many copies of myself, so as the prime I can spend my time doing the things that I hate, tax codes and laws and keeping up with local politics and how the families in the area are related to one another.”

“Well then, Harl-”

“Call me Fomoria. Harlan is the man in the veil.”

“Fomoria, I promise that I will do everything in my power to keep her safe, and if I need to call you, I won’t hesitate, I won’t be driven by pride or ego or-”

“I understand. Let’s get you home, I have things to deal with.”

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

Velvet realized that Fomoria wasn’t coming back any time soon, so he wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do.

But, he had to make some sort of choice, and he didn’t care for kids, and Ava clearly disliked him, so, he went to Amber.

“Come in.”

He stepped into her room; she was working out in the empty space.

“What do you want now?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Joking about you and Harlan, or, uh, Fomoria, whatever. I don’t mean to be-”

“Are you jibbering because you’re worried he’s going to beat you if I don’t say he shouldn’t?”

“Could you blame me if I said yes?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I’m not really worried about it, he knows how to take a joke.”

She gave him an odd look, and then he worried.

“You don’t know how protective he is over his family, do you?”

“I know he… I’m not very close to him anyway, so I shouldn’t-”

“Do you think he would leave you here if he didn’t trust you?”

“I think he knows my power and he thinks that this place is safe.”

“Nope, so now I’m curious, why does he trust you?”

“May I sit while we talk then?”

“Go for it.”

Velvet soon realized there wasn’t a good place to sit, so he dragged the chest at the foot of her bed out to the middle of the room.

Amber started to do vertical push ups.

“So, how’d you meet him?”

“He walked right into my throne room, crippling several guards along the way, and he dropped his charter on my lap.

I was so scared I nearly… anyway, that is the first time we met, he didn’t even say a word.

I’d say that we really met when he went to sell weapons and armor to us.”

“Wait, what? He shows up, makes demands, and then tries to sell you equipment for a war?”

“I thought he was insane too. But, I saw his city, Kor, and I saw how people were happy, and nobody was going hungry. I have never seen a single beggar in Fomoria.”

“He isn’t… removing undesirables, right?”

“New slaves get weeks, months after they’re freed to recover, to get back to work, find something to do.

It will be a problem in the future, maybe he takes care of them too much. You’d think that a nation of former slaves would be full of hate, that they’d be screaming for war, but he does his fighting with his own forces, most people just learn magic, farm, do whatever other tradework they can.”

“There can’t be that many slaves that you can fill a nation.”

“I don’t know the exact numbers. 150,000 in Kor, New Kingdom is something like 250,000 with all the new people. Couple million more in the nations that have been conquered.”

Amber pushed herself up, jumping with her hands and landing on her feet.

“I know Harlan doesn’t like slavery but-”

“It isn’t like it is here. Harlan mentioned it, but you people, when you have slaves, they can buy their freedom, or they work on contracts, right?”

“Yeah, lifetime slavery is for criminals who can’t be let free but have value as labor still.”

“Out there, slavery is for life, it is for the life of your entire bloodline from you on unless your master frees you, you don’t have the right to life, to refuse any order. The Cast, they- Oh, right, the Cast, metal men, rule most of the world, they brand their slaves with magic, they are the most cruel towards them.”

“And you?”

“Slaves harvested the raw materials, but workers used the looms, cared for the silkworms and tailor everything. Now, we’re just hiring the slaves, no need for it anymore with King Fomoria’s help.

Despite what he’s done, I think he’s a good man, but insane.”

“What has he done?”

Velvet went quiet for a time, staring at the sweat dripping down her body.

“Uh, I don’t think I should.”

She noticed his staring and pushed up with her hands, doing a flip to land on her feet.

“I thought you were-”

“No, I just pretend for… reasons.”

“Huh.”

She looked at Velvet, examining his body.

“Well… you aren't bad looking yourself. Want to help me work out?”

“I try not to overwork myself, I don’t want to get bulky.”

“I don’t mean actually working out.”

His body and his mind fought one another, but any fears of Harlan were washed away when she pulled on her armor and it shifted to reveal cleavage.