Harlan and Lugh went over everything he told her last night, he questioned if it was a mistake, a heat of the moment case of weakness.
Lugh didn’t disagree, but he also thought it was a good thing, they could both lean on one another out in the woods where people weren’t judging them, she didn’t have the pressure of her people's expectations, he didn’t have people heckling him that he couldn’t beat.
Ximena and Taren awake at around the same time, more wolf stew was ready to be eaten.
Adina woke up much later than the others and Taren had a look in his eyes that Ximena saw but didn’t understand.
He whispered what he thought was happening to her when he thought that the others couldn’t hear.
Harlan decided they should make a bath house, just large enough for a single person to clean themselves, the river had frozen over during the night and he expected more bloodshed before the week was through.
The 4 of them worked together and it was done before lunch, Ximena demanded that she enter first, she wasn’t used to not bathing and she hadn’t even done it in the river when she could because she was worried about others peeping on her.
Adina was asked to stand watch and make sure the others didn’t try anything, she tried to at least say Harlan would never.
Taren thought it was the right time, he pulled his dagger and was about to try and kill Harlan, but he felt eyes on him.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that if he tried to do this then he would vanish without a trace, the thought refused to leave his head no matter how much he tried to get rid of it.
Harlan never once stopped feeling hate from the boy, he had been thinking of waiting until he attacked and killing him in self defense.
The biggest proponent against this was Lugh.
Instead he went to have a private chat, he wondered if it was his conscience telling him that he was wrong for trying.
“Harlan. Why have you been this way towards me here? After what I’ve done.”
“A friend told me that I might need to fight and kill, because that is what people like me do, but I don’t need to hate. Right now you are part of the group, you’ve not been hostile so I’ve repaid that in kind. Though if you keep paying people to spread rumors about me and my friends I’ll probably put you in a shallow grave one day.”
Taren thought it was a nice reply until the end.
“You’re joking, right?”
“No, and while I am at it, I don’t hate you for what your father did. He's dead because of what he tried to do to my family, but you aren’t him, so don’t be him.”
“He is dead because you stole our livelihood with your magic, you are to blame.”
“He tried to have me killed, he tried to have my family killed, he tried to have my servants killed. No matter if you believe it, or if someone else is telling you to blame me, I don’t give a shit about anything else, he lost the right to live and you lost the right to defend him when he tried to do these things.”
Harlan stood up, seeming to tower over the boy even though he was actually slightly shorter.
“You can blow all the hot air about it that you want but I wasn’t involved beyond being his target, if you want to blame anyone blame the investigators who found the evidence, blame his own incompetence that he couldn’t hid the evil he was doing, and you can blame the kingdom that took me away so they could learn this power.”
At this point he was inches away from the boy who was frozen with fear, his hands were gripping his face, forcing them to lock eyes.
“You want to blame everyone but him, shut your mouth, never talk with me about this ever again, because I am only being kind this one time, I will never, ever, regret that he is dead, because it was him or me, and if he hurt my family then I would’ve dedicated my entire life to destroying him, to killing all of you for what he did. You aren’t him, don’t be him, don’t force my hand, because I’ve killed men stronger than you, and if it comes too it there is nothing the crown can do to stop me, they can’t even stop Dearil and he has been around for decades without even being a proper mage.”
Harlan let him go and sat back down, eyeing the spot where Taren had his dagger hidden.
Taren ran outside as Ximena and Adina were coming back in.
Harlan was in a foul mood, worse than he had been in a long time, he refused to let them try to speak with him, he welded the door shut with wood magic and set up a ward to keep their sounds out, he didn’t want to talk, he wanted to stew in his anger until it went away.
Lugh managed to calm him down eventually, Lugh had never been as angry as Harlan, he didn’t understand, Harlan starting feeding on that feeling of peace that he hadn’t truly had in years.
By the time he came out of his room Adina was talking with Ximena about Harlan and trying to convince her that he wasn’t a bomb ready to go off.
Taren tried to flee when Harlan came out.
“Don’t bother running, I am not going to hurt you. I hope you’ve learned something from our chat, I am sorry I got so heated.”
“N-no, it is fine.”
It got colder and colder, there was something outside, Harlan knew it was there and told the others of what he saw on the second night.
“This place is wrong, I can’t put it aside anymore. Someone made this place.”
“Is that really so strange? We’ve seen what the academy has done to the lands around it.”
“If it was just the plants in the wrong place and growing in conditions that they shouldn't, it would be one thing, but the stars, I can’t get over that. If we were in the south then they would be flipped, the sky is entirely wrong here. It isn’t an artificially cultivated area, everything here is wrong.”
Nobody really had an argument against him, but they all thought it was quite odd how much it seemed to upset him that he didn’t understand where he was.
They spent the day inside, only Harlan and Ximena ventured out to cut trees for firewood, neither of them wanted to be outside alone and they had only a dozen feet of vision with the heavy snowfall.
Harlan wished that he had taken warding and arrays classes, the ones he put up were fine, they stopped the snow from building up too much and the kept the heat inside, but if things kept getting colder things could get bad very quickly.
They hadn’t even been able to hunt anything, though they thought the meat they had could last them the week without much issue it still put Harlan on edge.
The next day the snow stopped, though it piled a dozen feet high and was frozen into a glacier of sorts, granting little respite.
“Harlan, what do we do?” Adina didn’t really mind being stuck inside all the time, it was how she spent her childhood up to this point, yet she hoped that she could get Harlan thinking of something to distract him.
“Stay inside, there is something out there still.”
“How long has it been since you last slept?” Ximena wasn’t put at ease by Harlan as much, tension was clear on his face and the idea of just waiting out another 4 days inside didn’t sit well with her.
“Month, give or take a few days. I don’t like sleeping anyway.”
“Why.”
“What ratio of good dreams to nightmares do you think you have?”
“I don’t know. Mostly good?”
“I’ve had nightmares for years, the better nights are the ones I don’t remember. If you think I am tense now, give me a bad night's sleep on top of this.”
“I’m sorry, I di-”
“Stop, I know you didn’t know. You can’t know, because you aren’t me and… nevermind. We are safe inside here, we have food. Though we will need to keep getting wood for the fire, it would be best if we stockpiled it today, the winds have died down and without the snow it should be more bearable. Taren, do you know anything that can help us?”
“Not unless you have the knowledge and materials for a proper enchanting lab. Wait… maybe I could try carving runes into the hut? They are the basis for enchanting, but they wouldn’t really be the same as a properly enchanted home.”
“I’m an idiot, the biggest fool in the world.”
The sudden outburst from Harlan startled the rest of them.
“I’ve had the answer this entire time. We don’t need more wood, we just need to use this wood the right way. I made jewelry once, but they kept exploding because they stored heat without a proper outlet. I can carve those runes into the wood and have them output heat until they break from the mana flowing through them.”
“Maybe hold off on the wood bombs, have you ever carved runes before?”
“Nope, I’ve carved wood a lot and I know the spellform like the back of my hand.”
Taren walked Harlen through the dangers of rune carving and why it might’ve been the start of enchanting but it was phased out long ago.
“So if I have this right, when the wood breaks and the rune changes shape it could just ruin the rune and kill us all in a conflagration?”
“Yes, that is the likely outcome.”
“We’ve wasted enough time then. I’m going to start felling trees. We can fill Delmet’s room with wood. Ximena, you’ll be the best help out there.”
They spent the day until dusk getting as much wood chopped as they could while Adina and Taren stacked it.
Yet it was all for naught.
Night came and the walls fell, Harlan was the first to notice. He heard whistles, then gnashing teeth, the first dogs had spiked collars that cut Harlan’s hand as he tore it from its shoulders.
“ATTACK.”
He rushed to Adina and grabbed her, he wasn’t sure if Taren was of any use in a fight, but if he died he wouldn’t mind, he wouldn’t forgive himself if Adina got caught up in whatever this was.
He blew a hole in the roof with an orb of void and shortly after was joined on top of the frozen snow by Taren and Ximena.
The man commanding the dogs wore armor and sword in style unknown to him.
It seemed made of bronze, the helmet covered nearly the full face, leaving only eye shaped slits and a small gap down its center, the most striking feature however was the large purple strip of horses hair down its center.
The chest piece bore a design as if it were the exposed chest of the man, the legs and arms held plating on only the outside, either a foolish choice or a taunt that no one could land a blow on him regardless.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
The shield was round and large enough to be used as a blunt weapon on its own; it bore the mark of an upturned V on its front.
The sword had a small guard on its handle and was shorter than the broadswords Harlan knew; it thinned slightly in the first third before bulging out again.
“That is quite unkind for you to have done that to my little Molloser.”
The word sounded foreign to Harlan’s ears.
“I don’t want bloodshed, though it seemed to attack me first.”
The man seemed disgusted by Harlan.
He whistled and Harlan knew what was coming.
“Adina, hold Lugh, Lugh, attack them as I command, I don’t think this is part of the camp.”
Harlan had little time to do anything about the others, they lived or died on their own merits.
The one struck from the front, another from behind.
Harlan found it awkward to kick the dogs as their saggy skin caught his foot and simply tore away instead of letting him land a solid killing blow.
While he still had solid footing he turned the upwards kick into a heavy stomp on the dog behind using his own gravity magic.
Learning to hover let him enhance what he already knew, and while most people could handle 3 times weight before their blood became too heavy to pump properly Harlan’s strong heart let him handle 5 times without too many negative consequences if used sparingly.
With a sickening thud squelch the second dog's head was nearly gone and the roof was damaged, his 230 pound 5’5 frame turned to over 1000, his joints screamed and required healing but he considered that more of a test run anyway.
Ximena hit them with lightning then followed up with ice spikes, the environment was practically brimming with water mana and she made use of it, falling into the snow and carving it away to try and escape, she could only hope the others made it out, for all of her bluster she was cowardly in the face of death, she had only wished to be a healer, killing was never what he hoped for.
Taren barely held up to the single dog as it lept towards him, his enchanted robes let him live long enough to stab the beast in the throat as it set upon him.
“FOLLOW XIMENA, REGROUP.”
Taren followed the order without question.
The man stood upon the snow and only started to follow the rest of them after they all entered the tunnel.
More and more dogs came after them and Harlan had to hand Adina and Lugh off to Taren, Ximena went in a straight line, just trying to get distance.
The man walked slowly towards them uncaring of the wall of jagged ice spikes Harlan made to slow them down.
He bent down in almost a runners stance with his shield in front of him, an anti-friction spell mixed with already being on slippery along with a blast of wind behind him let him catch up as the spikes barely slowed him down.
Harlan boosted his gravity again, knowing fully that this was going to hurt.
He covered himself in ice as the best armor he could form at the moment and met the shield with a shoulder charge of his own along with a hover cast at the moment of impact, sending the man back to near the start of the tunnel that Harlan then collapsed.
He rushed to Ximena, his arm could barely be called one anymore, blood pooled under him and it was nearly entirely broken.
“Ximena, help me stop the bleeding, we don’t have time for anything more.”
Her hands shook and tears veiled her eyes as the shock of the situation set in, before now she could’ve believed that this was still a test, but they wouldn’t let a student be harmed so much for such a thing.
“XIMENA, EITHER HEAL OR DIG.”
She didn’t calm any, but she did as asked.
Harlan couldn’t put weight on it but he could move it, and more importantly, his fingers again.
He sent balls of void that made wild patterns in the ice that he hoped would slow them down along with spreading some of his blood across each of the paths.
Harlan guessed that they made it only another 5 minutes before they ended up finding a wall.
“Adina, can you figure out if there is a cave here?”
“Y-yes…”
Her teacher taught her as if she was someone supposed to fight in a cave, one of those things was to hear hollow spots in stone to map them out better.
“Go down the wall to our right 15 feet, then 10 feet straight ahead, it is a large cave, I don’t know how far it goes.”
“Taren, help me dig this out then, unless you have some other trick it will be the best use of mana for you.”
He didn’t even say a word as he helped Harlan.
“Go inside, I’ll be with you in just a minute.”
“B-”
“NOW.”
Nobody wanted to argue with him, as far as they knew he had a trick that could save them all, even if he didn’t he was still the strongest of all of them.
Harlan could see that the man was close.
He started sealing the extra tunnels with a surprise behind them.
He reversed the runes for the cold flame spell and gave it no outlet, the myriad water mana in the air would do the rest, filling the runes to bursting and blasting the man with a subzero blast that should at least slow him down.
The ground trembled as Harlan made his way to the cave and the tunnel behind him filled with solid ice.
Yet it barely slowed the man down.
The runes carved into the ice degraded before they even finished filling and they lacked intent, simply acting as a giant blast that didn’t focus on him.
He cloaked himself in void and walked forward as if the ice wasn’t even there, he was mildly annoyed that none of his dogs made it through however, he had underestimated the brutality of the boy after his first request for no more bloodshed.
The cave was naturally lit by glowing crystals, uncut mana gems and magical ores littered the walls so much that any other group would’ve been overcome by greed.
“Do you think we got him?” Taren foolishly hoped.
“Not a chance. Adina, can you find out which path goes on the longest at least?”
She hiccuped and her heart pounded as she blamed herself, it was somehow her fault, she didn’t exactly how yet though.
She dried her eyes and pointed to the tightest tunnel.
“Alright. We will go inside and I’ll close it behind us, if we are lucky he can’t track us, but always expect an attack. Adina will be at the head, she can guide us, that tunnel doesn’t have light, I’ll be behind her, Ximena, you have more mana than me if I am right, so you’ll be behind me, Taren, you’ll seal the tunnel so you need to be at the back.”
He wanted to argue but Adina said that the man was already near the cave.
They made their way through the tunnel, it was thin enough that it scraped Ximena’s chest, she cursed the figure granted to the Golden but didn’t dare use an ounce of mana to expand it.
On the other end they found what seemed to be a dungeon, shackles sat unused and in pristine shape, just begging to be used.
Yet they ignored the bloodstains on the ground and sat down to rest, no one could bring themselves to talk, they simply stewed in their fear and hoped somebody would find them before that man did.
Taren wanted to blame Adina for leading them to a room with no exits and one entrance, but was afraid that if Harlan thought that he was trouble he would kill him on the spot.
Harlan had cast a 1 hour ring of light that was nearly out now, they had to occasionally cast spells to make breathable air.
“So, this is how we die. I kinda hoped it would be something heroic, maybe I’d save my family from somebody, detonate my soul.”
“Harlan… we can’t think like that.”
“This place is fake, every inch of it was made by somebody. They’ve got control over the weather, the plants that grow, the creatures in the woods, even the sky bends to their will. Tell me, where do you think we are? Do you think that we can be found? Are we even on Aarde as we know it right now?”
“They will come… the academy is safe, Marigold built it, they have to have safety features here if this place is all fake.”
“You put a lot of faith in a woman who lived 1500 years ago and your people cast out because she didn’t want to watch the world burn from a Golden cage. I’ve not had a great track record with your people, first one I met nearly tore my face off, the next three were pricks, now I’ve met you.”
Ximena’s eyes were out of tears but they tried their best anyway.
“And you are a great person, I am sorry that you are getting pulled into some bullshit because of me. I am sorry to all of you, even you, Taren.”
“No… this is my fault… I’m cursed… that is why they sent me to you Harlan. They wanted my bad luck to kill you, just like my brother, just like my mother, just like that maid.”
Harlan burst out laughing until he was in pain.
“Oh this is wonderful. We’re so fucked up that now I can’t tell if you’re all caught in the games of gods because of me or if Adina is cursed to lose anyone that loves her. This is a precious moment here.”
Ximena and Taren were still in shock and had no idea how to respond to the grim humor Harlan found.
“Adina, if this is your fault, I forgive you, ever since we talked two nights back I decided I was screwed if you really were sent to kill me. You look like my youngest sister, I almost questioned if there was an illusion at play at first. I can’t ever let you come to harm, so I guess I’ve got one thing left to do, let’s figure out who is the real cursed one here. I’m not going to die of hunger in a cave. I will get my good death.”
Adina struck him, but it was like a toddler hitting a bear.
“NO, YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME TOO, JUST KILL ME, I AM-”
She stumbled as she tried to get up, the slumbering air was finally hitting her, she had another 10 seconds before she passed out.
“Sorry, I knew we were both idiots, so I couldn't let you be stupid first.”
He kissed her forehead and brushed her hair aside like his mother had done to him before she left him in the woods.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to know you more.”
He could see her with his eyes veiled his tears, he hoped that everyone else would treat her right when he was gone.
It didn’t take long to reach the first room they entered from again.
As soon as he unsealed the wall he found that the man was waiting there sitting on a stone throne.
“I wondered. Are you the man who sits on the silent throne?”
“I hold no such title.”
“Well, I guess that would’ve been too nice. Let’s fight to the death then.”
“Once I am done I will deal with the others.”
“I can’t let that happen.”
“Weak men cannot stop anything.”
Lugh shaped himself into dozens of needle thing spikes as they struck at the man.
Harlan had one method by which he hoped to win, and it only needed one cut.
The man’s shield grew not unlike what Lugh had done and blocked each needle before he made a circle with his sword cutting pieces from Lugh, Harlan could hear the pain it caused him, but they didn’t have time to worry about it.
They were both walking into their death and they knew it.
Orbs of void were the next move, the man’s sword was also cut down and he didn’t dare try to block it.
The man looked at his sword and scoffed before stabbing an exposed ore vein, the blade greedily sucked up what was there, turning from bronze into a fire steel alloy in an instant.
The man did the same with his shield and a light steel ore vein.
Harlan decided that anything he could do he should be able to do as well.
It took a moment to figure out how to do it, but knowing that it might be possible was enough for Lugh.
He regained his lost mass by replacing it with shadowsteel, though as it was lighter than stonesteel he was larger than before.
He could see that the man was smiling as he rushed towards him, Harlan stepped back and deflected each strike as best he could, the man was testing him, getting faster and faster with each hit, Harlan was adapting to him, moving past the limits he always set for himself to not hurt others without meaning too.
The man’s sword turned to a spear and the firesteel shot through his bad arm, severing it.
Yet Harlan barely blinked, it was deadweight, slowing him down.
This continued for another minute, the man sometimes slicing ore veins to switch the metal of his blade.
By the time they reached the dead end of the tunnel Harlan had lost one eye, two fingers, an ear, and a toe.
He barely staggered to the wall and slid down to the ground.
He coughed up blood as he laughed.
“It would be a good death, yet you have another choice. I will teach you to shift forms, yours and others, in exchange, you will let me kill the others without more fighting.”
He chuckled.
“Things are about to get very hot in here. I guess I’ll see if the Fae worshippers are right about hell.”
Every step back he had taken during their fight was really his subtle way of placing the runes from his failed cold fire jewelry.
He put on a brave face, but thought it was the end, fire filled the hallways and he was gripped by the fear of death.
He swore he could feel his mother’s embrace in those moments as the man turned around and expanded his shield while casting neumous spells to either break the runes closest to them in the hopes that they didn’t go off or to cool down the rest of the cave.
He hoped that his family would forgive him for not coming back.
----------------------------------------
Balor was putting his plans in motion, he had been pulling out thieves from the ground and offering jobs to the ones who looked like they could be trusted enough to not steal from him.
He had gathered all kinds of documents from Tole, Luth, and even Yor, he knew how many guards each town held, what their income was and what they paid in taxes, he found cooked books showing each of the towns was knowingly cheating on their taxes in different ways and amounts.
He wondered how much he could slip away from the kingdom before he perished the thought.
These were good for blackmail but he shouldn’t try anything they were doing, his work was too well known, too small, too closely watched, and he didn’t want to hurt Harlan’s reputation by doing anything unsavory.