Harlan decided to open the door, on the other side he saw a girl, younger than him, white hair yellow badge.

Her eyes flashed in the colors of the rainbow, not seeming to be in any order, her hair faintly shimmered to match her eyes.

He felt his mind shudder briefly before he heard a voice

“Hello. You feel sad, can I help?”

He wasn’t sure what she meant.

“I heard your mind, you felt very sad, that’s what I meant.”

Her eyes stopped shifting for a moment and the sound stopped… or was it sound?

“Nope! I can talk right into your head!”

The girl was excited for a new arrival, he didn’t think there would be children so… happy here.

“It’s not so bad here.”

He wondered how she got such a powe-

“I said I wished people understood me better, a Fae heard me, she took my voice and gave me… this.”

It sounded like she had rehearsed the explanation many times befor-

“Miss Rosewell says we shoul-”

Harlan was starting to get upset, he couldn’t tune her out, she seemed to try and finish every thought he finis-

“I’m sorry!” he could tell she was upset, probably at herself, her tears fell as she ran away without a sound.

It didn’t take much to catch up to her, she had clearly never trained her body.

He looked her right in the eyes and thought as hard as he could.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry, I’m sorry, do you want to show me what’s for dinner?”

She dried her eyes and sniffled, but the sniffle made no sounds at all, the Fae had taken her voice metaphorically, she had lost any means to make sounds for expression.

“Yeah, that would be nice.”

The other children gave them a wide berth, they had clearly already grown old of the feeling of someone else in their mind.

“Tonight is tomato soup and bread with herbs and cheese, it’s my favorite! And we get sweet bread for dessert! Also we-”

Harlan felt awkward, first he had to clearly speak in his mind to not let her pick up stray thoughts, and secondly he never had a little sister, he didn’t know how to react to her constant stream of consciousness.

He thought she was a little annoying “I’m no-” and a little cute. She smiled at that, trying to hum for a moment before she remembered her curse.

She led him to a table, all yellow badges, all alone, the table could’ve fit 20, yet it was only used by 5 including Harlan and the girl, he should’ve asked her name by now.

“Its Esparella, they call me Relly though.” Harlan would need a lot more training to keep her from picking up his every little thought.

“Oh! She found a new chatterbox.” said a girl, the rest of the group was at least 4 years older than him, if not a little older, the girl had hair, far too much hair, it was a dull orange, curled around her head, her arms, and across her chest, all in many many loops, Harlan thought if she set it straight it would be more than 3 times her height.

“He is not my chatterbox.”

“She says I’m not a chatterbox.” the entire group let out a rapturous laughter.

“It’s fine, it just means one of us doesn’t need to do it any more.” a boy said, he was wearing what could only be called a cap filled with water on his bald head.

“Name’s Reet.” he put his hand out and Harlan shook it, it was uncomfortably warm.

“I was freezing in the woods, Fae heard me say I wish I was warmer. The water cap is to smother the fire, it doesn’t reignite when I’m wearing it. I nearly died of mana exhaustion before they found me. The rude girl is Zella.” Zella’s hair seemed to come to life and whipped the boy.

“NO, BAD.‘ she began hitting her hair.

All of a sudden Harlan felt a lot better about himself, his powers wouldn’t kill him if he didn’t put on a silly hat, he didn’t have to literally fight his hair, and… he stopped that thought before he upset Relly again.

The last boy at the table didn’t want to join in on the heckling, he just sat and ate his steak… wait, steak?

Harlan noticed the black veins all throughout it, it was a red meat, but very lean.

“Why is he eating a steak?” the boy grumbled “because I said I’M SO HUNGRY I COULD EAT A WARG. Now I can get powers by eating evolved animals, and only evolved animals. I could eat some of the soup, but I need mostly monster parts or I get sick, bone broth is fine, and they have to add bone meal to my bread. I’m Ky by the way.” Harlan noticed that his black hair was letting off little puffs of shadow smoke, just like a warg.

Harlan realized why people were so afraid of Fae now, what if he had muttered something stupid when out in the woods one day? Would he have 3 arms? Would he be 11 feet tall? He shuddered at the thought,

“Well regardless, welcome to our little group, you can’t ever leave now.” Reet said with a mischievous grin

“What?”

“You’ve been seen with all of us, we are the weirdos that no one else wants to talk to, you are branded, one of us now.” Zella explained.

“It’s not so bad, now we get a new friend! And you aren’t so scared when I poke around your head!”

“Does she poke around you guys' heads too? What did you mean by a chatterbox? I’m just the one who has to talk for her now?”

“Got it in one, and yeah, you better become VERY good at keeping your thoughts to yourself, she’s a little tattle tail.”

“I told Zella that Reet was thinking weird things about her.”

“I’m not going to repeat that.”

“SEE, what was it? I bet it was that thing, listen, I’m a growing boy, those kinda thoughts are completely normal.”

Zella barely held back her hair this time.

“So.. what’s your problem?” Zella asked.

“Have you heard of a Fomorian?”

Met with shaking heads he explained what he could do, and what he should be able to do, he tried to keep his mind from wandering into the descriptions that other people gave him for what Fomorians would do to bodies but some slipped through, Relly shuddered for a moment and gave him the same look Ava gave him when she asked about what he was trying to do with his soul…

“Who’s Ava?”

“I’ll tell you later, I just... I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Only a few hours ago he was with his family, they were basically in a prison, not much different from where he was now.

“I’m sorry…” Relly had made a bad habit of poking peoples sore spots without realizing it.

After dinner they all split up, Zella said they should go back to their rooms and wait for an instructor and that Harlan might not get one until the next day at least. As he walked to his room he realized he forgot to ask how Zella got her hair like that, oh well. When he returned to his room to find Rosewell sitting on a chair that wasn’t there before, a cloth covering something on his night table.

“I do hope you ate well, using the soul for… well any magic is very demanding, I may need to increase your rations depending on how things go.‘

“Why would we do that? Isn’t that… evil?”

“We would not be having this conversation if we believed that soul magic was some inherent evil, a little necromancy would do wonders for the kingdom if we got it working, oxen that could pull a cart from one end of the country to the other without needing a rest, mice to sabotage crops, we’ve only seen a few of them but the Fomorians can even revive monsters, and that’s not even getting into the weapons and armor they use, if we could make or move souls into items they could generate their own mana, cast their own spells! Oh the wonders of enchanting we could do! We could make golems without needing petrified trolls!”

Harlan suddenly felt he knew why she was sent to look after the odd ones. She had her own tinge of mad fervor in her eyes.

“So sit, you can feel your own soul, yes?”

“I… Yes, yes I can!” The fire in her eyes was infectious.

“Good! Now sense this rat’s soul. And no you cannot see it, this kind of training actually helps if the body does not cloud your mind, just cast whatever spell you use to find souls and use it on the subject.”

Harlan began his ritual, bring the elemental mana close, force it into the right pattern, bring it into a ball until it starts making a ripple that bounces off the soul, look at the soul.

It took over an hour to find the rat’s soul, it was smaller than he thought, was a soul proportional to a body? And then he went past his instruction, he tried to poke the soul, see what would happen.

He was very glad that the cage had a cloth on it, its body burst into blood and gore.

“I will commend you for your initiative, but before you start trying to change a soul we should talk about what a soul is as far as we know.”

“WHY DID IT EXPLODE.” Harlan was shaken, how close was he that first night to ending up as a pool of blood on his bedroom floor?

“The soul is what tells a body what it IS, that is why alignments change the physical appearance of a mage. It’s also the shell that holds the yolk and the white inside it, what you did was poke shatter that shell, the soul dispersed and it couldn’t tell the body what it was supposed to exist as, so… poof. but it doesn't matter, break a few eggs for an omelette ”

“Well, this was a quite enlightening session, I will be coming back, likely with something that has a less fragile soul, you shouldn’t touch your own but a human soul is by far the most resilient we know of, we were made as the beloved of the gods afterall.”

Harlan was baffled by the whirlwind of a woman.

“Oh, and very nice, we didn’t realize people could do such a soul searching spell so quickly, and for free! This will save a lot for the kingdom if normal mages can replicate it. And I’ll send someone to deal with the… subject shortly, don’t touch it.”