Viviane had begun teething, and after one night where they had been forced to put up veils, they called Hellon, who brought a bottle of whiskey with her.

The old healer in a now young body dipped her finger in the whiskey and then let the infant suckle on it.

“Don’t you have a spell for this?”

“Yes, and I’m sure that it wouldn’t hurt her, but we know she is magically sensitive already, and since she is still developing, I would rather avoid casting too many spells on her.

Once she’s a year old, then we may cast whatever we want, her soul should be well settled enough.”

“Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for giving me the body of a 20 year old. I might have a child of my own, wouldn’t that be interesting?”

“I’d be glad to-”

“I’ve got enough friends, I don’t need you to taint any theoretical reputation he has.”

Harlan narrowed his eyes.

“Thank you for coming, where should I send you now?”

“Don’t be so sour. I’m just honest enough to say that I know what other people think you are.”

“And what do you think I am?”

“A young man with more power and responsibility than he knows how to handle.

Someone who has only the faintest idea of what normal means.”

Harlan and Hellon spoke a little more, but Adina had gone back to sleep at some point, so they had to go out of the room; Viviane kept Adina up the entire night before.

He and Hellon sat out on the front lawn under an awning; Hellon poured herself a glass of whiskey.

As they sat there, Harlan holding Viviane, who had finally gotten sleep, Aida came out to watch James as he played.

“You are Hellon, yes? I think we’ve met already.”

“Even if we did, I wouldn’t recognize you.”

“Ignore her, Hellon is a grouch. She’s here because Viviane’s teething is so bad and I can’t make her stop growing teeth or speed them up.”

“Oh, you were the same way.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I saw spiders crawl on you, snakes lightly coil around you, birds would jump over you, and none of it bothered you in the slightest. But the night your teeth started coming in, not one of us got sleep. I had to go to one of the nearby farms, since we don’t keep alcohol in the house, and rub a little on your gums.”

“That’s what Hellon did.”

“Huh. I guess magic can’t solve everything.”

Hellon slammed down her glass, she wasn’t one to sip her whiskey.

“So animals have always gotten along well with you.”

“Other than Cu, most animals like me.”

“Empathy?”

“Probably.”

The more Harlan sat there on his lawn in the shade, watching the swaying grass and speaking with his mother and Hellon for a time, the more unsettled he became.

He was pulled from his thoughts by a wet feeling on his shoulder; Mu returned from the woods.

Hellon looked warily at the Mammoth.

“I would ask how you got one of these, but I’m guessing something died.”

“Actually, I avoided a fight and negotiated a peaceful resolution with an Ogre tribe.

I even made a friend.”

“Alright, but why?”

“I wanted a pet. Dogs, cats, birds, they feel… mundane. Mammoths are one of a bizarre set of creatures that don’t always evolve. There are criteria to get one to not die of old age.”

“Is that the case?”

“The ones I know of are all either very large, or very small. Minnows don’t often evolve, ants as well, otherwise we’d be overrun with them.”

“Huh.”

Clearly she didn’t really care that much about the subject, she just wanted to know why he had a Mammoth. So he tried to find a better topic.

“How did you and Sepul first meet?”

“He told you already?”

“Told me what?”

“Oh. I was one of his students, he was the healing and divination teacher at the time.

I hated him, I couldn’t stand being around him, he made my skin crawl.

He’d yell and hurl insults that could only come from a man who took a great deal of time to personally know every single one of his students.”

Harlan looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, I am the way I am because he taught me, what about it?”

“Nothing. But… it is a little hard to see him like that. I’ve seen him being harsh towards the students, but of my teachers you were the… least kind toward us.”

“I think that… what happened, it changed him. I just don’t know if he has the feelings left to be truly cruel anymore.”

“Did you ever meet Dawn when she was alive?”

“Eliza wasn’t even born yet when I graduated, and we interacted only professionally when we did meet until he came back out of hiding.”

He once more raised an eyebrow.

“How old are you? Eliza was… 25 or so when she died, so you must’ve gone to the academy at least 40 years ago. Probably longer, since you seem to make it sound as if you took a while to make a name for yourself.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“I thought you were in your 50s. Are you in your 70s?”

“Let’s go with that then.”

“With which one?”

“With whatever feels right to you. But I will say, I am flattered that you thought I was only 50; all that beautification magic really did work.”

Hellon dodged any further questions, and eventually she left to do something else that she was being purposely coy about.

Adina came out in the afternoon to sit with them.

Harlan seemed to have fallen asleep in his chair with Viviane sleeping on his chest, but when she tried to wake him, he just laid there.

She didn’t panic, as traumatizing as Hellon’s classes were, they did teach her to remain calm.

Adina took Viviane from his hands and scanned him.

He was alive, but barely.

She called for Sepul, since she couldn’t see anything actually wrong with him, and she had even checked his soul.

She wasn't fantastic at it, but she had one of the top three best teachers on the subject and was leagues above anyone with so little time learning it.

They moved Harlan inside and Sepul tried what he could, but he didn’t understand what exactly was wrong with him. He was after all a master of space, not time nor paradoxes.

He told Adina to call Marigold, who was busy, but told her that Harlan would be fine, he just needed rest.

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“She’s lying to me.”

Said Adina.

“If she says Harlan will be fine, then he will be fine.”

“You don’t even seem worried.”

“She’s Marigold, Champion of Aarde, Mother of Modern Magic. Has she ever done wrong by you or him?”

Adina was a little surprised, Sepul wasn’t someone known for respecting others, and even when he did, he still acted like he was above them, because often he was.

“You have a lot of deference for her.”

“I won’t state her titles again, but I have my reasons to trust her. I would like to see Vivi.”

The archmage rarely made facial expressions, and not just because he mostly showed himself as a living corpse who was so desiccated he couldn’t express himself.

Yet now, he took his the form of an older man, and he threw the little girl into the air and caught her with a giant smile on his face.

“My, you are heavy, like your papa.”

Vivi giggled as he gently caught her to avoid whiplash.

Sepul stopped tossing her and put his finger out, which Vivi grabbed.

“Your grandma had such a strong grip.”

He spun her around and noticed Adina staring from a rocking chair, resting her chin on her palms.

“What?”

“You remind me of Harlan.”

“In what way?”

“You both become soft, warm, when you are handling children. I bet you loved your wives as well.”

“Things weren’t perfect, I was still in a strange state, I hadn’t yet learned to act like how a human should.

I married her for diplomatic reasons, my first wife that is. But, we came to love one another, and though I’m sure my first children wouldn’t agree, I made leaps and bounds toward being a better man.”

Sepul looked between the infant and the woman.

“She has your nose.”

Dawn was watching over Harlan as he slept, listening and writing down what he muttered.

When he awoke, it was like a switch had flipped.

He jumped up from the bed and saw the sun was rising.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

“I am.”

He had a vacant look in his eyes and he spoke in an even tone.

“Here is a journal. You said Jenny a lot, we don’t know any Jenny’s, right?”

“No.”

She was about to call for Sepul when he spoke again.

“Did anything happen while I was out?”

Life returned to his face and voice, and Dawn let out a sigh of relief.

He went to see Adina, finding Gladio with her.

“Oh, Sir Fomoria, it has been quite some time.”

“Yes, it has. Honey, I’m back.”

“Sepul said that you would be fine, but it was quite scary when you didn’t wake up no matter how much I shoved you.”

He sat in the rocking chair next to her and started to hum.

“You seem like an old man.”

“Gladio, why are you here?”

“Can I not just visit my host?”

“Royals don’t ‘just’ do anything.”

“I gave up any claim to the throne some time ago. I really just came here to visit.”

Harlan didn’t believe it, but he didn’t say anything more, and instead he made smalltalk.

When Adina slept, Harlan slipped out of bed and moved to the tower which was now completed and was linked to their room.

He dropped the facade and started to vacantly stare out the window.

Harlan had seen a day in the life of what he would’ve been like if he had never gotten taken away, if he had been raised as a Fomorian.

He woke up on a bed of bear pelts next to women, Fomorian and human, some of them chained to posts.

Harlan couldn’t control these memories, they had simply crossed over due to a paradox flare up.

Darrath walked out of his simple hut, hunted with his brothers, raided a trade caravan that passed near their lands by inciting the horses to go off the road and towards them.

He felt every part of the slaughter, squeezing the eyes out of a man, laughing all the while.

Darrath was cruel, and Harlan saw that in himself, but he told himself that he cruelty was only for evil people, people like Darrath.

As he sat there, rocking back and forth in his chair, he processed what he was seeing, what he was feeling, and he did everything he could to keep his mind his, to not be influenced by that other man.

There was a particular memory that caught his attention, a ritual that expanded the domain of the Fomorians.

Even separated from everything, Harlan was a monster of magic, he would have the first look at everything and take any magical items or books.

He heard voices, The Darkness was there.

Darrath would still be her champion, and he began to question when she told him that he wasn’t her only candidate.

If she hated the Fomorians like his father because of what he did, why would she let Darrath be her champion.

It was hard to tell when he was unless he caught glimpses of himself and could guess his age by his face, but he had killed his father when he was barely 17 if he had to guess, and became the chief as a result.

Some time later, he killed his brothers until he only had one of them.

Darrath cared nothing about his family, only what they could offer him.

His heart sank when he saw Eliza, still alive, still being used to make more siblings with just the right amount of Fomorian in them.

It became easier and easier to keep these memories from influencing him the more he saw, the more he realized what he could’ve become, the more he rejected every part of what that other life was.

That it existed in any timeline made him weep.

The sun rose, and Harlan jumped from the window, opening a gate before he hit the ground.

He didn’t know exactly where he was going, he followed his gut.

There were names he heard in those memories, and he was sure that he had been born somewhere near The North.

He stopped at the first town of many, asking if anyone knew the names of the other places he heard about.

After a dozen towns, Adina finally called him.

Harlan moved down to the ground and put up a veil.

“Hello.”

“Where are you?”

“There is something I need to do. I don’t know when I’m going to be back.”

“I just need to know, are you alright?”

“This is something I need to do. I don’t mean that I feel like I need to do this, I mean that I’ve ignored this, pretended that it didn’t matter, that I didn’t know these people, that I had no responsibility toward them.

But I am Fomorian, I am the bastard son of a chief, and if I let him go, he’ll just keep making monsters like me, twisting them for his purposes. The Fomorian pact has been broken for quite some time already, if I don’t find him now, I might never find him.”

“Just be careful.”

She ended the call; Adina knew better than to stop him, and she didn’t disagree with him.

He kept hopping from town to town, village to village.

Finally, he found one of the places from his memories, and he visited the town mayor.

“Sir Fomoria, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

She was clearly nervous that he was here.

“I am looking for a nearby tribe of Fomorians.”

“Oh, well, since they have been allowed to leave their little… villages-”

“I’m here to kill them, not save them.”

Some of the weight was off of her mind.

“Whenever we get close, our men get turned around. They scurry like rats, stealing food and women.

If I knew how to reach them, I’d burn that shithole to the ground.”

“Do the men get turned around, or do they feel like they need to turn around?”

“I’ll have reports brought in, you can check the exact wording.”

“No, it was only a matter of curiosity. Just point me in their direction, I’ll break through their wards and arrays regardless. Fomorians are magically powerful by birth, but they lack the knowledge that humanity has amassed, I don’t think that they will stand a chance against me.”

“Sir Fomoria, I don’t mean to-”

“You may send men with me to ensure that I am not there for anything other than what I claim.”

“Ah… yes, I will do that then. But I feel that I should ask, is this official business?”

“Personal. I must pull up my family tree by the roots and salt the earth. How soon can your men be ready?”

“Give us half an hour.”

Harlan lifted the dozen soldiers and the mayor, moving forward but slicing the air with a wedge so they barely felt how fast they were going, and so they didn’t freeze to death.

While one couldn’t notice inside the Learning Zone on account of the massive array over the independent country that kept the weather mild, it was winter elsewhere, and though he was before the mountains that separated the rest of the continent from The North, it was still helish.

They complained that they were going the wrong way, but Harlan knew better.

Once they were past the arrays, they saw the village.

The group landed at the outskirts, snow crunching under their feet.

The Fomorians rushed into offensive positions and called their chief.

When Harlan looked at the face of the man he saw himself, and it infuriated him; the smug prick.

looked at Harlan like he was expecting this.

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

The girl was pulled out of bed by her older sister.

“If you aren’t up and dressed in the next ten minutes I’m leaving you behind.”

She groaned and staggered to her feet.

“Let me guess, too excited to sleep?”

“I was reading.”

The book had been resting on her chest, and had fallen down when she was dragged from her bed.

The older sister dusted the cover off, My Father, by Darrath and Viviane Fomoria.

“I don’t want to go to the rites, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to learn from that book.”

“The empire was founded by their father, and-”

“Yes yes yes, he split mountains and broke the veil, the great godslayer. I can’t believe you think this bullshit happened.”

“I can’t believe that you are so young and so cynical. But Harlan was like that too.”

“Do you realize how creepy it is when you talk about him like he is a friend?”

“If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t be here, the rites wouldn’t exist, and-”

“And you wouldn’t be leaving.”

“Don’t be sour.”

“Oh, no, I’m giving him some credit for that. When you leave I won’t need to wake up early for this shit.”

“Just get ready.”