A terrible wind blew from the gap between the mountains where the rebel forces were said to be amassing to attack.

Harlan stood on the wall facing the valley along with Sam, Liat, and Orden.

“Liat, stay back here, watch the walls and support any areas that seem to be getting more focus by the enemy. I’m going out to fight after the first volley of war spells. Sam, I might have something for you to do but I honestly don’t know what exactly you can do. Orden, what area is the weakest here? Or rather, which will be facing the largest force?”

“Find the leaders, they’ll be using giant bloodgems on their armor and weapons.

We can handle the small fry.”

“Very well.”

Yet an hour had passed, and the soldiers vanished from the sensor arrays right around the midpoint in the valley.

“I have a suggestion.”

“No.”

“I- Huh? You don’t even want to know?”

“I do not.”

“I was going to see about making a powerful wind reversing array and then a series of large scale cooling arrays. The North is harsh enough, more cold could lead to more cases of hypothermia and-”

“You don’t know these lands, you don’t know the people. Did you know that 80% of the population is water and fire aligned, and the rest is split in that last 20%? These men who are fighting are Northern to the bone, a little more cold won’t change anything, and you’ll have wasted resources that could be used to make things better here at the camp.”

“Alright then, I understand. I guess maybe that’s why I handle the cold so well.”

Orden clinched his teeth and held back his words.

“Stay here, tell me if they come. If another hour passes, you are clear to go along with the scouts.”

And so the hour passed, and Harlan went with them.

He shivered as soon as they reached almost to the halfway point.

“Not up for the cold? It’s colder than a wyvern’s tit, but I thought you archmage were-”

“It’s not the cold, something is wrong here. Look.”

“I can’t see much through the snow, what do you see?”

“The tracks, they are treaded one way, the boots have spikes that curve, we’d see holes going the other way if they at least turned back. These men were gone in an instant.

At the front, a few of the footprints are too light, they didn’t get to finish their steps.

Be careful.”

A younger scout scoffed.

“If you aren’t from the North, you wouldn’t get it. We aren’t stupid, we’re-”

“You have a very large chip on your shoulder, but I have nothing against Northerners. Much like The Frontier, a harsher environment has caused the people to often fall to one extreme or the other.

Some of the kindest people I’ve met were in lands technically unconquered, but bordering The North.”

He sniffed the air.

“Mushrooms?”

“What?”

“I smell mushrooms.”

The scout captain sniffed the air.

“I smell it as well. Put up air filter spells on yourselves, it is possible that it is related.”

Harlan followed the scent, finding small mounds in the snow.

“Captain. What do you make of this?”

“I figured you would be the one who knew.”

“It feels like something is weighing down on me, like the answer is on the tip of my tongue but I’m not allowed to know what it is.”

“Huh.”

The younger scout seemed disinterested, and Harlan wouldn’t let anyone walk over the prints.

He walked past everyone else, right in the center of the first set of seven mushrooms.

“Step back here.”

“Why don’t you come and get me then? This is pointless, we’ve been standing around for almost an hour and you just keep going ‘Hmmm… perhaps?’ like a golem.”

“I don’t have time to listen to you whine, get back here, that is an order.”

“I’d rather sit in the brig than spend another second out here doing nothi-”

The young man vanished as soon as Harlan got near the edge of the mushrooms.

“EVERYONE BACK, NOW.”

This time, everyone followed his order.

Harlan looked around for more mushrooms, but they only started to grow past the halfway point.

Nature didn’t do this, Fae did.

“Fairy circles, how did I miss that?”

“Where is he? Can you get him back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well what do you know?”

“More than you, less than I would like.”

“Do you at least know someone who does?”

“I know a man who attended the academy and took fairy law for four years, but he wouldn’t be helpful.”

He had an idea of how Claude could actually be helpful, but it probably wouldn’t work.

“Then who do we call?”

“Well…”

Xol found time to help.

The men were deeply unsettled to see a regal looking skeleton poking at the mushrooms.

“You are very lucky. You say a man was teleported away?”

“Yes.”

“You were the target.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Xol stood in the center of the first circle.

“If you get near, I believe it should react with your mana signature. So step near the circle.”

“You want me to teleport you to some unknown location as part of a Fae trap intended for me?”

“If one intends to find a hare in a trap, yet instead a bear is found, it does not end well.”

“Are you-”

“Boy, do it.”

“If Marigold gets angry, that is on your head.”

Xol removed his skull from his spine.

“Not a problem, I can always get a new one.”

It was strange how familiar he was, and even with others around, he wasn’t speaking in riddles.

If he returned, Harlan intended to ask him about that.

Orden contacted Harlan, it had been too long.

“Hello?”

“Did you find anything?”

“Fairy circles. Fae intended to trap me, but got one of the scouts instead. Xol is inside of the trap, trying to find out which Fae are behind this, why, and, if possible, he’s likely to bring the scout back if he’s alive.”

“You don’t sound confident in that.”

“Xol probably sees him as just another person who he has no connection with, and I don’t either.

If it was someone important, he would certainly try his best to return them.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t rush into the circle yourself.”

“I don’t do Fae. Cut my head off, burn me, strike me with lightning, drown me, toss me in a volcano, put me inside of a gravitational vortex, and I’m fine, this body is just one of mine. But the Fae corrupt souls.

Unless I must do so, I don’t want to ever encounter another one.”

“Perhaps the same could be said about you?”

“I’m putting in that request for your personal file.”

Harlan was sure that Orden was swearing on the other side after he disconnected.

Xol came back so suddenly that nobody even noticed.

“Everyones dead and I didn’t find anything useful about the Fae. Burn the mushrooms and the magic will fade away. Oh, and it wasn’t just about you, the fairy circles activated when they reached a threshold of power, one which you instantly reach, but for them they needed hundreds of soldiers across multiple circles to reach.”

And just like that, he was gone again.

The scout captain just shook his head, it wasn’t the first time he lost a man, but when they were like that, unruly and ornery, it felt like he failed to keep his men in line.

Orden was just as displeased.

“You failed to bring a single soldier under control, and then he died. That is on your head.”

“I was stepping closer to force him out of the circle when it activated.”

I’m cursed, something of my own fault.”

“Explain.”

Orden leaned closer, quite interested in what Harlan would say next.

“All magic effectively boils down to forcing desires on the world and having it listen.

Nobody knows or really thinks about how much the world around them might change through entirely unconscious magic. My god has told me that my desire to help others is so strong that I naturally end up in bad situations, that I am drawn to these places beyond my control. Those fairy circles would be there with or without me, but because they were going to be put there, a chain of events led me here.”

“A convenient excuse for everything turning to shit when you show up.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Harlan got up to leave.

“We aren’t done here.”

“You don’t have the power to make me stay. And I mean that physically, magically, and politically.”

“There it is.”

Harlan stopped.

“What does that mean?”

“You are a cruel man, but you pretend to be better than you are. You abuse your powers constantly and ignore all consequences to your madness, but you are made a royal guard and Queen’s Blade at almost half my age.”

“Jealousy is unbefitting of you.”

“It is not jealousy, it is anger. You are everything wrong with the very nobles we are fighting, but you are on our side only because you happened to meet the queen before she was the queen.

You don’t deserve any of this.”

Harlan sat back down.

“I was forcibly taken from my family when I was 11, I know Rosewell because she was my warden.

If you want to piss and moan about deserving things, or about how much more you may have suffered compared to me, then we are going to be here for a long fucking time. So, are we starting this pissing contest? Because my mother was kidnapped and I’m the product of a breeding experiment, the result of rape. Then she was murdered by my god so she didn’t fuck me up but somehow I instinctively cast a spell that ripped her mind from her soul and stuck it in my own, fucking my emotions up for years.

So no, I don’t deserve this, I didn’t deserve any of this, but I made do with what I could, just like you did.”

“Are you done with your tantrum?”

“I could keep going for hours. Also, fuck you.”

“You can leave now.”

Orden felt annoyed, angry, chided, but he also wouldn’t let Harlan think that he could be right.

“Maybe I don’t want to.”

Harlan did not stay for long, since there wasn’t actually anything to do in the commander's tent.

Sitting there in his tent, he finally worked up the courage to do it.

“I’ve been waiting.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For deciding to leave and put myself in danger for my ego, leaving you there with our daughter.

I’m lonely and bored.”

“Would anyone know if you were gone, just for a few minutes?”

“Everything that I can sense tells me no, but in my heart the answer is yes.”

“Then follow it, your heart led to me, didn’t it? Is all magic truly based on desire, and if strong enough, could you do anything.”

“Huh? Well, theoretically yes, but really no. Aarde has sealed certain magic away to prevent another Fae incursion event. But, yes, there is a lot of unconscious magic at play in the world at all times.

Dawn existing at all is a good show of how someone with magical inclination and a powerful, pure desire can get what they really want.”

He could hear Vivi fussing on the other side.

“Do you ever think of what it would be like if you decided to give Yara a try instead of me?”

“No.”

“Never, not even once?”

“No. I never put any thought into what my life would’ve been like with her. She had to leave, and I don’t think that I could change that, not even Liat could.”

“Do you know how much she is in love with you?”

“What is this about?”

“I was just thinking about the academy, about Vivi. Yara only got to see her after she was born.”

“That’s it?”

“Why can’t you believe me?”

“Sorry, it’s just strange, you sounded jealous of her.”

“Of course not, why would I be jealous of Yara? Do you think Vivi would’ve been pallid brown?”

“You are starting to worry me.”

“Fomoria is with Yara.”

“In the desert?”

“What? No. He went into the desert and found her. They came here, since they aren’t allowed to visit Liat.

He just seemed so happy with her, too happy. He also… nevermind.”

“What did he do? I’ll… I’ll do nothing.”

“Don’t be like that. Anyway, we can talk later, Vivi is getting fussy so I think she needs a nap.”

“She’s fussy because you are upset. Are you-”

She broke off the connection.

Another week passed, and there weren't any signs of Nulson in the area, he didn’t take the bait.

It was strange, he was still going around, causing havoc, and from everything they knew, he should’ve gone for it even though it was a trap.

The only conclusion they could reach was that he was genuinely afraid of Harlan’s soul magic being used to capture or kill him.

There was some sense, it wasn’t baseless, since he had also chosen to blow himself up rather than interact with Fomoria for more than a few seconds.

Rosewell decided to follow this to its conclusion, and now all Ragnite soldiers were going to be required to learn a small amount of knowledge on how to attack souls.

Until this point, their focus had been on defense, though many of the soldiers with any sort of talent ended up passing the certification without additional training because the concepts were already tied together.

Still, Rosewell decided to have him remain there since she was aware of him being naturally drawn to places where something terrible was happening, or was about to happen.

Whatever was about to befall Camp Saltlick, she wanted him there for it.

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

The Fae poured the vial of ichor down the throat of the final comatose man.

Her champions watched on as the men, 500 at the start, now just 60, changed.

“What’s the plan? I’m doubtful that-”

“Shh… one needs bait to bring the beast.”

“But Harlan’s already there.”

“His penchant for being tied to terrible tales would not lead him anywhere without foretold violence and death.”