Harlan woke up, noon by the look of it.
He hoped it was still the same day, he hated losing time sleeping. He was worried if it kept up too much it would end up sleeping as much as a normal person did.
2 people were sitting at the end of his bed, a man in a white military looking suit with black trim. the other had the colors reversed. They both wore half capes matching their suits, the buttons were silver instead of the gold he expected. The woman in the black suit had white hair, the man had black hair.
Harlan found the contrast in both of them striking.
They shared a look, and then spoke in turns, unsettling Harlan. The man spoke first.
“We need to know what happened.” “Who attacked you?”
“It was that fake wolf I was carrying.”
“Ah, the golem.” “We heard you are working on the same sort of golems?”
“We couldn’t learn much, its internal parts were sheared and shattered.” ”Did you do that?”
“No, it was a fenrir”
“Where did you see it?” “There shouldn’t be any around here…”
“Newly evolved?” “Possible.”
“I don’t know where I saw it, the wolf golem chased me deeper into the forest. I went towards a roaring bear hoping to get away from it, but the bear was dead. The fenrir sounded like it knew what the wolf was, and hated it. It forced me to take it out of the forest. I was going to do that anyway though… you couldn’t learn much from it?”
“What did it say?” “We need exact words.”
Harlan told them exactly what was said as best as he could remember.
He had lost more blood and done a worse job healing than he realized, he normally remembered things pretty well.
“Poison on its claws.” “Would’ve killed a human.”
Suddenly Harlan realized what he should’ve asked at the start.
“Who are you?”
“Allen Dyad, sin seeker.” “Alice Dyad, guilt seeker.”
“You are a noble now.” “Seekers investigate nobles.”
“Sin as a guardian.” “Guilt as an investigator.”
“I seek judgment.” “I seek the truth.”
Harlan wanted to just call them eccentric weirdos, but they were probably able to make his life a nightmare if he insulted them.
“Thank you for your time.” “We can keep you updated on the case if you would like?”
“I think I know who did it already.”
“Oh?” “Who could that be?”
“Fomorians, who else could make a golem like that?”
The twins shared a look. They clearly had other ideas.
“We will keep that in mind.” “We must go now.”
Harlan decided to lay in bed until a doctor came to check on him. Apparently one was just outside the door, he heard the twins leave but the door didn’t close before the doctor came in.
“You are free to go, it’s nice to see you with damage we can actually fix.”
“Thank you, how long was I sleeping?”
“About 6 hours. Lunch is already over, though you can still get a meal prepared for yourself of course.”
“How did everyone take the news…” This was Harlan’s bigger worry, everyone was part stressed and part overjoyed since the twins were born. He didn’t want to take away from them being happy.
“Well enough, there was a panic when you didn’t show up by the time dinner ended. Search parties were out 30 minutes after that. But once you were found with only physical injuries everyone was relieved.”
Harlan very much did not like the phrasing of that, as if they expected he had done something foolish and passed out in the woods as a result.
Harlan realized that Lugh was beside his bed the entire time.
“I didn’t see you there.”
Harlan felt fear from him.
“What is wrong?”
The mental images he got back were like trying to decipher a child's drawing, but he was afraid of the twins.
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“Sir Fomoria, the baron also wanted me to tell you to see him as soon as you wake up. I’ll call a maid to help you find him.”
Harlan walked to the baron’s office, a guard outside stepped in to ask if he was available.
He then rushed Harlan into the room.
Redwall had a sword out of its sheath and was thrumming his fingers on his desk.
“What did they tell you?”
“Not much really.”
“So less than nothing. Over the last 7 years 19 noble children under light guard or alone have been mauled by animals without witnesses, the only evidence being tufts of fur in some of the cases. They were considered closed cases, not as much effort was put behind them since it was 3rd and 4th children being killed and not heirs, it didn’t look like anything overly abnormal, just bad luck. This… Golem has thrown many things into disarray, by the time this spreads all over the country I feel there will be consequences. There will be people wanting you to answer them. I’m told you made an golem? Please, show it to me.”
“It’s in my room. In a small pen near my closet.”
The baron sent a guard to fetch the toy. They watched it just wander around and baa for 5 minutes.
“Well, it is clearly far from what that thing was, can we take it apart?”
“Let me safely dispel the soul first, but yes, I have all the knowledge to make another one that acts the same in about an hour’s time.”
“What if you didn’t safely dispel the soul?”
The baron worried that he had been unknowingly making soul bombs.
“Nothing really, probably. There were a couple cases of things exploding with spells that were put into them when they broke, but this thing can’t even cast anything, better safe than sorry though.”
The baron wasn’t shocked to see its insides, simple articulation, no spell work carved into it, no reinforcements, the fake wool was cotton, not even real wool.
He compared it to the teardown of the wolf golem, it was a marvel of engineering, gears and shafts and metal reinforcement for every part of it, false teeth that hid a large number of needles connected to poison tanks inside the beast, leading also to its claws. Many parts of it could shift to make it smaller or larger to make attacks less predictable, and it was fully coated in real wolf fur and used magically preserved wolf eyes. He had no idea how any of it really worked, and The Unseen took it away far too quickly. He wondered how they knew and how they were there so quickly, but they kept those kinds of secrest to themselves.
“Well, obviously your creation is nice as a toy. But the thing that you destroyed was a silent assassin.
Did you ever see it use spells?”
“I didn’t destroy it, a fenrir did. And no I never saw it cast anything.”
The baron became deep in thought over his words.
The question was who?
A name popped into his head.
“You and your sisters are not to leave this house without an escort of 4 men, armor, and a weapon. Those bastards probably know exactly who did it. They just wouldn’t admit it.”
“Who?”
“Clear the room, all of you.”
There was some minor confusion but everyone still in the room other than Harlan and the baron left.
“Dearil”
“Who?”
“How did you feel when you were taken away to the facility?”
“Upset, angry, sad, I wanted to see my family again.”
“How would you feel if after you came out you realized that your entire family had been killed and the crown did nothing to stop it? That it was a nobles lust at fault for the event? How would you use your unique talents to get revenge?”
“You already know what I would do.” Just thinking about it had Harlan fuming mad at the idea.
“This was during my fathers time, Dearil was taken from his family, not for a fae curse, but because he was good at making things. You mentioned a mechanical bird once I recall?”
“Yes”
“Have you ever seen a machine as advanced as that since then?”
“Oh… But shouldn’t he be the prime suspect then?”
“I won’t get into all the details, but he was assumed to be dead over 30 years ago, after his revenge was done there were only a few more attacks. But if he is back, or he never really left, things could get worse.”
“I am told you bought armor for your sister? I will have my men pick it up. None of you are leaving the house. I will have some armor made for you, simpler stuff as a temporary measure. If he knows that he has lost his toy, that we might know he is still alive, he might do something. Tell me every detail about what happened last night.”
Harlan told his story with renewed vigor, the baron called in a scribe to write down his entire account.
Eyes widened at the mention of talking with a fenrir. They were apparently known for being highly territorial and their dislike of humans was also known.
Harlan couldn’t help but remember Balor’s ominous feeling from a few days back.
----------------------------------------
Dahlia awoke in a hospital, she barely remembered what happened, just darkness and pain.
At the end of her bed she saw the older Dyad twins.
“Good night Dahlia.” “Do you know why we are here?”
She looked down to see her arms hadn’t even been regrown yet, it was better done while she was awake anyway.
“I was attacked, did we get them?”
“I am very sorry to tell you…” “Your unit… you are the only survivor.”
“You were found with your arms gone and your lungs pierced.” “Someone wanted you out of the way, but alive.”
She had known some of those men since she was in training, she wondered why it had to be some of them that she had spilled blood and broken bread with for years, she wished it was a unit of new men on rotation that day.
She pushed that feeling away like a good soldier and came back to herself to finish the interview.
“Do we have any clues?”
“The Fomorian boy was attacked that night.” “Your men were killed the same as dozens of assassins.”
“Sudden entrance.” “Overwhelming force.”
“How many are we looking for?”
The twins shared a look, they didn’t want to tell her, nobody wanted to hear it.
“We found a single set of prints on the way in and out.” “They vanished 20 feet away from the scene.”
Despair, she had no other word for it.
There was little point in being one of the best when there was always somebody stronger, she had never felt like a little fish before then, she was strong, talented, she had gone through the years at the academy and trained under an archmage for a few months, yet it amounted to nothing, if whatever attacked her wanted her dead, she would’ve never even realized what happened.
This was the fear he left in his wake, he desired to be unknowably powerful, to be the death in the darkness that was feared by men and children both.