His hopes were unfounded, leading to Adelwulf not speaking unless asked a question and Ibery putting on a false calm.
He could keep avoiding bad questions, he could pretend that everything is ok, he could hope that they would just warmed up to him. But Harlan went with the boar loose in the blacksmiths shop strategy, either he gets out unscathed or the blades on display cut him to pieces.
“So, why are you two are so afraid of me? I am Ibery I understand, very shortly after meeting I did threaten, very seriously, to kill her. But I haven’t done anything to you, unless it is just the Fomorian thing? But I hope you being friends with Amber would give me some benefit of the doubt.”
Amber wasn’t happy, Bojana wasn’t happy, Tau was dipping his cookies in his tea. The others were just silent.
“Yes, it is because of what you are. No, I am not going to talk about it.”
“Fair, I’d rather an honest response over pretending you aren’t afraid of me.”
“I am not afraid.”
“You can’t pretend to hide it, not from me. Amber knows.”
“Well… Yes he can do some stuff with sensing emotion.”
She was uncomfortable answering, but she was trying to go along with Harlan.
Adelwulf simply narrowed his eyes.
“I will not be called a coward.”
He stood to leave.
“Oh, so you are an idiot?”
Amber was about to yell at him but he put up a silencing veil on her.
“You aren’t a coward for being afraid, even if it doesn’t make sense. But you are an idiot for thinking you are a coward for being afraid at all.”
He tried to give a response but simply turned and left.
Amber pinched him.
“What is wrong with you? You can’t just talk to people like that.”
His cheek barely stung, she hadn’t put real power behind it and he was stronger than he looked.
“I don’t want to sit around with someone who just silently broods instead of doing something. If he hates me for who or what I am, I’d rather he just say it.”
“There is some sense in your words. But you should understand, if you can truly sense emotions, that some wounds are deep and illogical. Action for those is just as sensible as the wound itself. I have heard of you, do you not hide your own wounds?”
Tau butted in.
“I have things I don’t want to talk about, but I’m not the same, I’ll voice that I don’t want to talk about it and admit what I am feeling.”
“Think on my words. You believe yourself iron, but you must understand some are clay, not yet formed and hardened. I am hoping for peace between all of us, Ibery, would you like to talk about what happened between you? There will be no judgment from myself or from him, he is simply a confused child, try not to hold his words in your soul.”
“Well… I am not worried about the original threat. It is something he said to my aunt.”
“The genocide thing?”
Tau spit his tea out in surprise before Harlan could finish.
“As I was saying. I am sorry for that, I realize how it sounds now, I saw a man burned inside out, and I realize how much of an idiot I am for thinking I could do that to everyone, people I don’t even know. Just for things done to my… to other people who I also don’t know.”
She made a warbling sound, which Harlan believed was a contemplative hum.
“This is good tea. What kind did you say it was?”
Tau felt the discussion was done, and better topics could be spoken of.
“Vanila, I heard it comes from a bean grown on an island off the eastern coast that is added to the tea and dried. It always calms me.”
“Well, it is very soothing. Did you make the cookies? I can taste the love in them.”
Bojana snickered at his words.
“My maid made them. I think they are made with a recipe from her mother. That could explain the feeling of love from them.”
Bojana lost it, laughing loudly for a time
“You go along well with the bull. Sliping from acting serious and wise to children at the drop of a hat.”
“I also think I can taste the love in them.” Ibery chimed in.
“Agreed. You and Isha aren’t… I mean it is an age gap, and she didn’t get a husband at the maiden festival. I guess if you waited a few years…”
“Are you trying to pay me back for the Ibery thing? It was funny and I refuse to say otherwise.”
“What is this between you and Ibery?”
Bojana asked with a wicked smile, she saw a barely contained laugh from Amber and a look of embarrassment from Ibery, so she felt there was a good story.
Harlan started to explain the story much to Ibery’s dismay and Bojana’s joy.
Even Tau teased her once he decided that it was simply ribbery and not ill spirited bullying.
Eventually this led into other stories shared between them, the time Ava tried to exercise with him, the time he controlled the slip ants, and more lighthearted times with Relly and Zella.
When their little party ended Harlan realized he didn’t know any of Zella’s friends from the academy, only that she also hung out with Amber’s group. He hoped that she had a group of friends in her year.
He looked over the damage to his room, 20% of his cookies were gone, along with 5% of his tea. He realized if he keeps having people over he will run through his stockpile very quickly. The cookies are no loss, though he did really like Isha’s sugar cookies, the tea was more expensive and time consuming to acquire.
“They are fun.”
“Why didn’t you join in? I’m sure they would be fine with you.”
“I like watching, I don’t want to say something weird. You always do that, but you fix it sometimes too.”
Harlan winced at the dagger thrown directly at his soul.
Shortly after he was done cleaning someone knocked on his door.
“Sir Fomoria. Dinner service will be starting soon.”
“Thank you, I’ll be there.”
The man walked away, Harlan forgot that the room was set to let noise in but not out. Making him feel silly for even answering.
He checked his map, memorizing his path to the cafeteria, to him it was likely the path he would most often take.
There was a park between the main building and the dorm room. He avoided going through the grass, instead using the paths as most others did.
He tried looking for familiar faces in the crowds moving to the main building. Seeing the vampire boy from earlier he moved in for the kill.
“Hello.”
“Oh, you are from earlier. The one with all the rainbows.”
“That is correct.”
“Do you need something?”
“Just making small talk. Trying to make friends.”
“I’m Henick. I heard you are working with the NIghtwatchers. Are you planning to join them?”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Maybe, I haven’t thought too much about it. But I’m sure they can always use more people who aren’t connected to Aine. Is it true that silver is really bad for you guys?”
“Yeah. Something about it being Aine’s favorite metal but we aren’t on Aine.”
They went through more small talk as they walked in, but both of them agreed they weren’t clicking, Harlan thought he was a bit too childish, Henick thought Harlan was too low energy. No hard feelings between them as they went different ways.
Harlan got his food, the first serving was free, with more costing extra, but it was still cheap for what it was considering portion size and highly trained chefs were preparing it.
The dinner was roast beef with baked potatoes and some little fluffy cups the chefs said were cooked in beef fat which Harlan liked. As he walked to an empty table in the corner he saw the students of Aine had extra bloody roast beef made for them.
Rand explained that they could get some of what they needed from eating, not unlike how normal people got a lot of water from their food, but he still needed to drink blood to live, to him it was a bland and joyless meal, he would say blood to live and good food to make it worth living.
He sat at his table and split the potato and mashed it in the skin using air magic to form small high speed pockets of air. Using with water magic to control the added butter and cream and prevent spillage. adding salt and pepper before using a little bit of heating magic to form a skin on the potatoes. He wouldn’t call himself a great cook, but what he had seen done normally he could replicate with a bit of creative magic.
He thought about how some things could be controlled once they got into a liquid state and some couldn’t, like tea was still water, mud was half and half, but molten metal was purely earth magic.
As he thought over this oddity his table began to fill up, what he found odder than his liquid magic question was that his table was a collage of colors instead of more or less self segregated by nation like many other tables.
“How many of you are spies?”
The table quickly cleared and nobody else sat by him until Zella arrived.
“How did you clear the table so quickly? I saw it from the line.”
“I asked if they were spies.”
“Well, you always did know how to kill a party.”
“Better than finding out the party was an ambush.”
“Who knows, maybe you have a knack for being friends with spies?”
“Oh, right, do you have other friends here? I don’t want to take you away from them.”
Pitfall question.
She didn’t immediately answer, instead she stabbed at her potato for a time.
“Nah, I am fine with being part of Amber’s group when I can.”
It was a lie, though he didn’t understand why she would bother.
“Well I am glad you get along with her, I might’ve made a little mistake when talking with Adelwulf, any suggestions?”
“Make him something, he is pretty cagey about where he was raised but he should like that you tried to make a gift instead of words or gold. If you had another pelt I would give him that, his people like their hunting. But I have to ask, when you say a little mistake, was it really little? Or was it you being yourself, because that would make it a big mistake.”
“Alright, so who should I be then?”
“Always be Harlan, just keep some of those thoughts in your head and out of your mouth. Even if you both end up not liking each other you can at least avoid making things awkward between her and Amber.”
“So, how did they all end up together? Does she have human friends? Not that I care about them all being beastkin, it just seems odd.”
“They all met at the… actually I can’t tell you about that, but they are all good people who stand up for her and she stands up for them.”
They finished up their meal in silence and then split up, she was tired and both of them didn’t feel the need to chitchat without reason.
Harlan made his way to his room, getting no short amount of strange looks.
When he opened the door he saw his schedule on his desk, he wasn’t told beforehand what classes were mandatory.
Seeing it now he had, basic elements, basics of warding, basics of arrays, basic spell crafting, melee combat.
These all seemed normal, putting students in a wide grouping of important classes and seeing if they excelled at any of them. But what struck fear in his heart were the last 3 classes.
World history, merchantry, and politics.
His first thought was seeing if the letter said how many mandatory classes he could miss each year before being punished, no dice. Then he started wondering if he could take an advanced test, skip the lessons for the year by proving he knows enough. But without Balor it would just end up harder than simply showing up at the classes and doing the bare minimum to pass.
His plans were all either more work than just doing what he needed to or they were bound to fail. He couldn’t possibly make a good enough golem to sit in on the classes, he liked the idea from when he made those learning dolls, but he didn’t like the idea of his soul exploding again.
He had to admit defeat this time.
Harlan checked the map, seeing if what he was looking for was open overnight.
He made his way to the physical training area, otherwise known as the gym, at about 10PM.
It was one of the buildings he had seen in the distance when he went to the assembly earlier.
He was falling behind on his exercises, he wasn’t weak, but he wanted to be stronger, and telekinesis training was mind numbing for him, with training empathy requiring two people and Lugh getting bored of it,
he felt that it was the best bet.
He expected most people to have gone to sleep. Instead the gym was about half full. Some were people like Ibexians which generally needed 2 hours less of sleep each night compared to a human, but mostly it was false undead.
He saw Selen was there in tighter fitting clothes with Wulrun. He looked so delicate, like he was scared of a world of paper, ready to fall apart at his touch.
But he barely stretched Selen clothes as he pulled on them. She handed the small wolf boy a 200 pound weight, Harlan thought it was a joke to show him his limits, instead he lifted it with relative ease, leaving shallow handprints in the iron bars.
“Good night. Are you training him?”
“He has a hard time controlling himself sometimes. We are still teaching limits. But I know he is gentle soul, isn’t that right Wulrun.”
“Yes Selen…”
“Well, I hope that goes well. You want me to fix the bar for you?”
“No need. It’s all soulsmithed to return to its proper shape in time.”
“Neat. I’m going to run around for a bit.”
“Wulrun, would you like to try and run with him?”
Harlan couldn’t even hear his reply, but Selen did.
They both lined up at the start of a large marked circle around the gym building.
Harlan put up a short lived ring of light to be a counter. After his display inside, Harlan expected to need to run at full speed to keep up with the boy. But he was clumsy, his arms were as long as his legs and his back was hunched over, making his run silly looking and slowing him down.
Harlan slowed down to let him keep pace, he didn’t want to take the fun out of it by lapping a child who he was exercising with.
After 3 laps Selen spoke with Wulrun, who seemed to dislike whatever he was told.
“Harlan, could you run that with him again?”
“Sure.”
Wulrun’s stance was different, he wasn’t going to run like a man, but like a wolf.
The ring faded and they were off. Harlan didn’t start at full speed, not expecting him to be much faster. But this caused him to need 2 laps to finally pass him.
Harlan won in the end, but it took effort. He never really had a training partner for basic exercises that did that for him.
“Good race. I had fun with that, Wulrun.”
“Why?”
“Well, the feeling of the wind in my face, the simplicity of just running without a worry, I’m not doing it to get away from something, it is just for the sake of it. Did you have fun.”
“Yes” He answered in barely a whisper.
“Alright, how about you sit in the meditation ring for just a minute, I’ll come get you when you can come out. Is that ok?”
“Yes, Selen.”
The boy went to a ring and pushed his mana in, causing a veil to pop up around him
“He is still afraid, he wasn’t always like that. He was normal once. He didn’t want to be like us.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I see how gentle he is with you though, why?”
She opened and closed her mouth more than once, trying to find the words.
“The Nightwatchers, we are the guards of human from those of us who would cause them harm. Wulrun and his family… I don’t want to talk about it, but he had to be saved with the blood of a werewolf and he can’t turn back. He saw things that made him so afraid of werewolves that they can’t even get close to him without him freaking out. So I took him in to train him. His transformation isn’t linked to the lunar cycle like normal, maybe he can control it when he gets older.”
Harlan thought about it, sure, he had all his issues, but he still had his family, without them, who would he be? His mind jumped to the worst answer, an age of blood and death so horrible Aarde has to restart.
“No, I like nicer brother more than that mean one, that isn’t you.”
“Right, sorry Lugh.”
“Don’t be that brother. Stay Harlan.”
“I will. Don’t worry.”
“I believe he can do it. I think I need to believe it.”
“I didn’t mean to say he is like you. You and him are… well not as different as some might think. He is clay still in a kiln. You are hardened steel already.” She punched his arm in a friendly manner
“Yeah, I guess I am. Also, that isn’t the first time I heard that today.”
He bowed goodbye to her and went to start lifting. He thought more about what Tau had said. He felt like he knew he wasn’t really iron, but he wasn’t clay either. He was going through the furnace right now, and hoping he came out as steel instead of slag. Maybe he would come out only to break from a temperature shock fracture.
He kept thinking about this as the gym cleared out, eventually the last beastkin left and it was just vampires, werewolves, and Harlan. Wulrun started doing whatever Harlan was doing, Selen approved, though eventually they needed to leave, instead of going to the girls or boys dorm they went to a different building closer to the gym.
Harlan noted and promptly filed away that knowledge.
Then he kept on his exercises.
He left when the sun broke and he decided he needed to take a shower and change his clothes.
As he sat in his room growing wood to have some extra on hand for whatever uses he might need he heard a knock and a call for breakfast.
He was working on a simple medallion carved to look like a Canis, though he wasn’t sure if he wanted docked or undocked ears on the design, he heard it was a coming of age ceremony for them, and he didn’t want to insult him by doing either. In the end, he went undocked, figuring it was better to just replicate Adelwulf.
He finished up the details, and placed it in his pocket, hoping to give it as a peace offering.