Harlan talked with Balor during their walk to the dining room for lunch.

“I’m sorry. You are angry, but it’s not really yours, I tried to push it away, take an easy way out with my magic.”

“Do you think it was a bad first impression?”

“Ava might like that you stood up for me. I’m sure you will grow on her.”

Harlan could feel a little bit of joy flowing from Balor.

“I was thinking… should I make you a brother, for my weapon?

“I wouldn’t do that now, I… I am still coming to grips with what I am, I could go insane at any time for all we know..”

“I’m sure you will live a long and happy life Balor.”

Lunch was quiet, Ava wasn’t there, she liked to eat with Breken instead.

There was no larger conversation to have quite yet. So they made small talk and finished their meals in a timely manner.

Then it was off to a tutor for Harlan, Balor was excited, he was all sorts of mixed up in what he should do, and hopefully this won’t end as poorly as the last training session.

Harlan was led to a room closer to the count’s office, one of his ministers would be teaching Harlan.

He was a man in his 70s at least, yet he still had traces of black hair, he moved like a man decades younger, with a cheery hop in his step.

“Ah, you must be Sir Fomoria, or would you rather just Harlan?”

“Harlan is fine. Thank you.”

“You seem to have a good base currently, casual speech with someone lower in station from you is fine so long as they are not liked too much by someone higher in station than you. You know how to say thank you. But you forgot to bow, while I am your teacher I am higher in station than you. But this will all make sense the longer we go for.”

Harlan would’ve barely learned anything from the class if not for Balor, he didn’t seem the least bit bored learning how to bow and what words were appropriate. Time for dinner quickly approached.

“Well, I think that went well. You seemed to soak up information.” the man checked his watch.

“But I must end our classes here, you must have dinner and then you will be working with the count if I recall. We will be meeting like this 3 times a week until I believe you are ready for high society.”

Harlan gave a proper bow and stepped out of the room, heading to the dining hall once more.

He spoke with Balor about new ideas he was having, he had noticed how he was picking up Balor’s thoughts at times and how he could assimilate them into his own memories quite easily, and Balor could do the same with him, teaching him everything he knew about souls.

He loved being able to just bounce back ideas at a rapid speed since they both shared the exact same knowledge and weren’t slowed down with having to voice these ideas.

He was going to try one of these tonight at least.

But for now Harlan wanted to eat, and after much debate with Balor they would do something else as well.

As soon as everyone was seated Harlan asked his question.

“Jaramis, do you hate me? I think we should just clear the air now, I know what letting your emotions fester does to someone.”

“You sit at this table and accuse me?”

“So yes then. Why? I haven’t wronged you, I am not holding a grudge about you sending me off to the royals.”

“Because I have been helping to deal with the issues caused by your people, and they have only been growing since you came, I do not trust you.”

“My people are my family, the fomorians are just where I am from. I read some history when I was gone, Regna was once a dozen or more states, shattered after the gods left and monsters ran wild, but they joined together. Why can you accept that for me?”

Count Redwall spoke.

“I think we should put this on hold. Jaramis, you will think on this.

Harlan felt Balor’s anger rising, and soothed him as best he could.

The rest of dinner was awkward silence. Until the end.

“Harlan, do you wish to still do our research?”

“Yes, I think we should.”

And so they went to his lab, near his office.

“Boy, I am told that you have done something interesting.”

“Yes, I have. Introduce yourself.”

“I am Balor, brother to Harlan.”

“Can you think? Or are you an extension of Harlan.”

“We spoke earlier, I have different ideas, I think Harlan at times does not go far enough, but that might be a result of my creation process. Inspired by Harlan sighting the creation of souls inside the womb.”

“And how were you made then?”

Balor explained from his point of view the creation of himself.

“Very interesting, and your name? Is it yours? Or did Harlan name you?.”

“I chose my own name, I found the name, along with another, within the incomplete — inside Harlan.”

Harlan wasn’t an active participant in the conversation, making it much easier to ignore the mention of his geas.

“Harlan, would you be alright with me sending a letter to the royals? This could be much better for soul enchanting items.”

Balor did not like this idea at all, the idea triggered something deeply set in the source of Harlan’s anger. He tried to flee.

“I WILL NOT BE CAGED, I WILL NOT BE A SLAVE, I WILL NOT BE AN ANIMAL.”

He didn’t make it far, he didn’t have hands to open doors or windows, and even at full speed he was too weak and light to break anything.

“Balor please, calm down, he is just asking, he won’t take you away!”

He didn’t have eyes, but Redwall could feel his gaze when he spoke the next words, floating near the door.

“If they come, if they try to take me, I will detonate my soul. Do not test this, do not test me.”

Harlan didn’t think too much about what he had given to Balor, he didn’t have the power to really hurt someone yet, but if he detonated his soul? Harlan had never seen anything that could defend against it.

He broke into a cold sweat as he spoke.

“Redwall, please, listen to him.”

He could see the fear plain on his face.

“I would like us to have a private conversation. Balor, you may stay in the room, I will just be using a sound dampening spell, do you take issue with this?”

The metal of the ring itself scraped against itself, Harlan remembered it, the sound of when his first test with an overmind crystal, the lesser versions of Balor to an extent, detonated its own soul.

And then it stopped.

“I can accept this.”

Redwall immediately put up his spell.

“How much danger are we actually in?”

“I’ve tested what a soul detonation does, nothing the royals were willing to give me could survive it, furniture, armor, nothing.”

“And what about him doing that to us?”

“I don’t think you can detonate someone else’s soul, I tried it a lot actually.”

“And what is he then?”

“Well… Autumn mentioned that Jaramis doesn’t like me. Because I am fomorian, I was so mad I wanted to attack him, so instead I decided to cut out the angry parts in my soul, and then once I wasn’t angry I realized it was a bad idea, so I made it into a new soul, with that as its base.”

“Right, so you took your hostility towards my son, and put it in a flying bomb that cuts through any defenses.”

Harlan realized how bad that sounded when it was really thought out.

“I also fed him copies of my happy memories, I think it should be fine. He didn’t try to attack him during dinner after all…”

Redwall let out a sigh and pinched his nose.

“Alright, it should be fine then, right?”

“Unless Jaramis attacked me I don’t think that Balor would hurt him.”

“We will be watching him closely then.”

“I appreciate that you say he.”

“Yes yes yes, now, I want to talk with him.”

Harlan explained and then Balor flew himself into the privacy barrier.

“Why do you call Harlan brother, from his explanation he sounds like he should be your father?”

“It sounds wrong in my mind, he is not my father, he is not my master, he must be my brother. I cannot explain.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I will protect Harlan, I will protect the rest of my family, I will gain knowledge, in that order. I think that is what I want.”

“And my son?”

There was silence for a few moments longer than Redwall would’ve liked.

“I will ignore him, he is a fool, he couldn’t understand my existence. He cannot even understand Harlan. If he strikes against us, I will strike back. This is what I believe is right.”

Redwall dropped the privacy barrier.

A headache was already coming from dealing with this.

“Harlan, Balor, what do I need to do to set up a lab here for soul enchanting, and are you allowed to teach me how?”

They consulted for a moment about what is truly required and what is just nice to have.

“We will help. You need trees, if you got just a branch from a mimic tree then it will take over any other tree in about 3 days. You need to be able to put the trees to sleep so you can take a piece of its soul. You need people to harvest souls. You need people to stabilize souls. you need people to put those souls into the object. A single person could do all this, but it takes a lot of mana, and they would need skills for each part of the process. I can make a single item once every 2 hours.”

“How long would it take to get people trained for each step? I would like 2 people for each step at least. With an expansion coming as the process is smoothed. And what alignments are best for this?”

“Hmm… if I taught day and night, and they were talented I think I could get someone trained in 1 month, the royals spent a lot of time trying to teach people in the right way to make it easier to learn. And alignment doesn’t matter, it requires control over all 6 elements to do this.”

“We can talk numbers once we get it set up, but I will give no less than 5% of profits after taxes, provided that you can get this all set up before you leave.”

“I am going to have Balor read economics to see that you aren’t going to cheat me, if that is all then I have another test to conduct. It will take all night, you can send someone to watch if you want.”

“Very well, I will have a rotation of people taking notes. And I can have some books sent to your room.”

They bowed to each other and then Harlan put his plan into action. He walked into the sparring room.

He then made lesser souls, formed only from copies of his desire to learn without a real mind behind them. And placed them into the clay training dolls.

He got this idea from how easy it was to have Balor send him memories and then integrate them into his own mind.

So he set up 2 of them to read different sword forms, and 2 of them to fight without knowing the forms trying to make up a new form for the machete. Then he could do something else, Balor could look over economic books, and in the morning he could just integrate the memories into his own mind.

Harlan decided to just train himself physically until morning and then try out his new knowledge.

He left Balor in his room with a stack of books opened to the first page, he could use wind magic to flip the pages after that.

So Harlan came inside once the sun started to come up.

He first put Balor back on, his mind flooding with knowledge of economics, it was uncomfortable but he was alright.

When he walked into the sparring room there were 2 men taking notes and sorting them into different piles.

He waved but they ignored him.

Then Harlan walked over to his 4 learning golems as he decided to call them, and started an oversoul link.

And then requested that the souls give over all they had learned.

Then everything went white, he felt like he had burst into flames. Balor was screaming into his mind.

“I won’t let you die. You will be alright.”