After finishing Redmonds armor Harlan checked on the flesh golem, it was a failure, though he didn’t expect anything else.

As soon as he entered the room it tried to ambush him, so he grabbed its antlers and twisted until the neck snapped.

Yet the golem kept moving, its body only a facsimile of an organism.

It stumbled around and tried to twist its neck back into place, but Harlan just hit it with a small bolt of void.

He could’ve tried to take the gem out and wipe it, but there was no telling if that soul in there with its free will and desire to kill him had marked it in some way he couldn’t know about.

“What a shame.”

On the 2nd day Blackstone had the armors sent over, he had them done before the next morning.

Luckily, she didn’t try to convince him to go to Onyx’s party

The caretakers were going quite well.

He acted as a relay, his mother’s feelings passed through him and into the golems.

“Alright, that is done, now the testing.”

He held the gem in his hand, making it think about theoreticals at a very quick pace.

When he didn’t like the answer it gave, he told the gem that it was wrong and corrected the answer, erasing the incorrect one as if it never thought about it in the first place.

By the end of day 3 he could fill the gems with the right answers from the start and he had all 100 of them, 50 Fox Sisters, and 50 Elk Brothers.

The only thing he needed now was to get the parts from Brig and actually build them.

A day passed with Harlan and Adina feeling awkward about that whole day in retrospect.

It was strange for them, she had seen him shirtless, ran her fingers along his scars, held his hand as she fell asleep, but it never felt like that day.

She hadn’t been embarrassed about doing anything with him in a long time, but it just felt like something had changed.

They weren't talking to each other as much as they did before, they stopped being comfortable being alone together.

Both of them realized how silly it was and by the end of the week they moved past it.

The first of the children came, 15 out of 58, clearly they were afraid, but clean clothes and real private rooms, not being stuffed side by side with only enough space to get up at night did a lot to make them trust Harlan.

The dorms were both still under construction, but for now they had enough rooms ready.

For the golems they were getting their first real test runs cooking and interacting with the children.

It was a resounding success, the fear quickly faded and nothing out of order had happened.

A few children did start to fight one another for food, but a Brother stopped them, explaining that they could have seconds, even thirds if they really wanted it.

The elk golem towered over them at 7 feet in height, but the eyes of most prey animals were naturally somewhat gentle looking and his soft spoken voice had all the right inflections built in to make it clear it was not upset at them for fighting.

In time they would learn the names of the children, their voices, their likes and dislikes, and it would be shared over the crossroads.

Each of the golems had the ability to instantly communicate with one another through the crossroads like amulets could, this let them keep track of every child and make sure that all of them could act as a single unit.

The only sour spot for Harlan, and one he didn’t really have any answers for, was that each of them was effectively the same ‘person’ they could not gain individuality, something that he believed would make the children like them more, but also was just too dangerous to be allowed.

After 2 days, he stopped watching the golems.

They had shown no signs of anything he did not expect them to do, so for now, he was going to trust in his craftsmanship.

Something that was quite odd to Harlan, was how much time Gunther spent with Sara.

From his mannerisms, he thought that he swung the other way.

He was sure that in time, if they got closer, he would find it very funny.

For now, it made him feel like an idiot.

His projects were mostly finished outside of Dagian and the trains.

He could reasonably take care of himself, but he still tripped up every now and then and he wasn’t used to his new body.

A week, maybe less, then he would dump him in Tole with enough money to get himself established.

It was lunch time, 5 weeks until he had to leave for the academy again, 4 weeks until the party at Blackstone mansion.

“I don’t know what to do now.”

“What do you mean?”

Harlow’s request of no work while eating was barely adhered to.

“I’ve done everything I’ve got planned. I’m not sure what to do, everything moved pretty quickly, nothing really went wrong.”

“What about that other thing… trains? I can’t seem to remember.”

“It is a Fae word, it doesn't get stored in the soul like normal ones. That project is just a headache.

I’m working off the half remembered stories told to a man by other people who only heard of them and a simple toy left by a lich. It should be simple still, all I need is a box with seats in it and the right spells to move it forward along a track.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I need to make it so idiots can use it. Golems can do most of the work, but with so many people, they aren’t going to trust it unless there is a moron with flesh and bones in the driver's seat...”

He just kept yammering on about his work and and the frustrations of being so above everyone else.

“There he goes again, the great and powerful Harlan.”

“Ava, you know what he means.”

“Yeah, I do. And he pisses me off.”

“Harlan isn’t like that, he just wants to help people. He doesn’t think he is perfect.”

“Really? Because we keep hearing him talk about how he has to dumb down anything that he isn’t using for himself.”

“Harlan just thinks of stuff differently. He isn’t… normal.”

Once breakfast was over Harlan seemed agitated and went down to the bunker to work, asking that nobody bother him for a few days.

Dawn was starting to regret making him focus.

Ava decided to go on a walk with Zella and train with Redmond who was still getting used to the armor talking to him when he asked questions.

Currently he was floating through the air, trying to get used to the feeling of weightlessness while she made sure he didn’t hurt himself, however hard that might be in the armor.

“I almost want one of those.”

“I’m sure if you bat your eyes at him he’ll give you one.”

“Ha ha ha. I’m not sure about it, sure, it might be fun, but I already know hover. Besides, it’s not like I’m going out on missions all the time and I don’t really have enemies like Adina.”

Ava wasn’t even moving anymore, she just floated and let the wind carry her.

Zella caught Redmond with her hair and turned him upright before pulling Ava towards her.

“You seem a bit moody lately.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know, why should you be? Is it just that time finally?”

“Maybe. I just don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what he is doing. Did he ever tell you guys about when he killed bandits?”

“Maybe, he tells us a lot of stuff.”

“He went through the camp like a monster, killed everyone he could, didn’t even try to capture them. Then he gets to the leader, he had a hostage, Harlan saved the girl, has the leader completely immobile.

He grabbed the dagger out of his hands and put it in the man’s throat. No hesitation, as if that was just a normal things to do. I had to practically beg him to save his life, and I could tell Harlan hated doing it.”

“Wha-”

“If you say what if it was you, I’m going to punch you. That is what he said. Ss if the chance of something bad happening means he gets to kill whoever he wants and ignore the law. I don’t know what happened after that, but then Lugh decided he didn’t want to be around Harlan anymore. I just… I wish he was like when he was younger. He cared about everyone, he wasn’t violent, he didn’t hurt anything on purpose.

He just did his training and played with everyone. Now he’s off underground doing who knows what, he practically stormed off as soon as he had the last bite of food in his mouth.”

“Think of how Harlan spent those 4 years away from you. He barely talked to me and Relly about what he did, but we would go days without seeing him at all and then he comes back all jittery, muttering to himself. Rosewell had to drag him out of the labs sometimes. I don’t mean that as a joke, I mean she called guards who physically removed him. Then we thought he was alright, and he came back here and then… It took him a while to really be ok.”

“Can you tell me more about how that place was?”

“I can’t tell you a lot. We got food and a comfortable bed, we got leisure time, but it was a nice prison.

I’m sure Rosewell’s ears are burning, but that is what it was.

I didn’t mind it so much, but talking with Harlan after the fact, he hates being told what to do, he hates not feeling like he has control over something. I just don’t think you really understand how hard it was on him or how much he lies to all of us. I know he talks with Amber and Mary about things that he doesn’t say to me or you. Did you try to talk to him?”

“When am I supposed to do that? He’s either working or with someone else.”

“Just drag him away. Harlan… he is an idiot, he might feel you being upset, but he isn’t going to do anything about it just because of that. He needs to feel like you want him to talk about it.”

“What? Why? If he knows I’m mad at him he should just talk to me about it.”

“Did he ever tell you about his mother?”

“What about mom?”

“I mean his birth mother.”

“No.”

“Then I can’t really talk about it. But I don’t think he likes his empathy. He is big on free will and people making their own choices, so to him it would be like taking the choice to talk about it away from you when it isn’t so serious that he needs to. Why did he try to kill that bandit? Because he thinks that they are taking away the choices of people.”

“And so he gets to kill them all? Isn’t that taking away their choices?”

Zella looked almost ashamed, she knew the answer, but saying it outloud sounded terrible.

“He… he is pretty extreme at times. He even knows it is hypocritical, but he barely considers people like that humans, he thinks of them like goblins.”

“What? No, he said that before, but he was just throwing out insults, he was upset. He doesn’t really think about people that way.”

“Ask him.”

Zella flew off to correct Redmond and Amber just sat on the branch thinking.

Harlan had spent the last 8 hours trying out train designs based on what Brig told him about.

For testing he made a small doll golem that could fit inside of the train and made it as smart as he thought a person was.

Then he put others inside of the train as people trying to push it off the track or otherwise disrupt the machine.

“Take a break.”

“No, I need to work on the next design. Maybe if I put it in a tunnel, with rods, 5 points of contact on the sidewalls.”

2 hours of variants on this lead nowhere.

He was trying to make the worst case he could, effectively a riot on the train, if it couldn’t survive what he had already seen people do, then it wasn’t worth putting out there for

“At least look at what the lich gave you. Maybe these designs are flawed.”

“That little toy is worthless, it gave me an idea and that is it. It doesn't have wheels, it just sits on the track.”

“Maybe that is a hint? If those wheels tilt then the whole things gets unstable, cargo in the back or too many people on one side causes the thing to flip. What if it was locked onto the track?”

“It would scrape on it, the tracks would need to be replaced constantly.”

“Friction lessening spells? Floating on top of the track?”

“Maybe…”

Balor was just a few floors below them speaking with Dagian.

“Do you feel you are ready to move out yet?”

“Yes, if I had a cane and just told people I sprained something recently I would be fine.”

“Tell me, how does your body now feel? Your eyes and ears are back to what seems normal?”

“I feel lighter than before, I was never particularly heavy, but it’s like I’ve lost 10 years of stress.

Eyes and ears seem better than before. I used to have a pair of reading glasses, healers said they couldn’t really tell why they couldn’t get them to work just right. So eventually I just gave up and had a pair made.”

“Good, now, while my associate doesn’t have much faith in you. But I believe that a man, when given a second chance, is very loyal. I have a friend in Tole who works under a noble nearby. I believe I could convince him to let you work for him as an accountant.”

“Perfect. My mind is just as sharp as it was before.”

“And you are certain of this? That you’ve not forgotten anything?”

The man recited a long list of personal facts about himself, the same one that Balor had asked for a week ago.

“Mental acuity seems correct. I will speak with my associate about your release within 2 days.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, what is this place? Who are you people?”

“This is a room, we are researchers. It is best that you don’t ask questions. If you look the gift drake in the mouth, it might just swallow you whole.”

Autumn took Adina on a walk along while Aida and Harlow got some time to play with the children.

“I heard that you and Harlan shared a room in Borden, did anything happen?”

“We slept, Harlan had to take two baths, one for his armor, one for everything else. We barely even got to see each other.”

“Always out being the hero?”

Adina giggled.

“He wouldn’t be happy to hear it, but yes. I’m sure if I asked, he would come back at nights so we could talk, but I think he needed to be out there doing something. He gets so caught up on people, he needs to just let himself feel like he is helping.”

“He loves people too much, he just hates to see them keep failing to live up to his idea of them.”

“What do you think his idea of people is?”

“They love each other, they value freedom, they understand when they need to make sacrifices for the greater good.”

Adina had to stop herself from laughing.

“Sorry, but I don’t think Harlan believes any of that.”

“Oh? Really? Does he not believe it? Or does he just not say it? Because when I talked to him, he seemed upset that people didn’t meet these values of his. If he believed that people weren't like this, then he shouldn’t have been surprised that they didn’t meet his expectations. He doesn’t hate people, he isn’t so cynical as that, he wants them to be better. He wouldn’t try as hard as he does if he didn’t believe that they could be better.”

“I’m not sure that I believe that.”

“I don’t think he wants to believe what I’m telling you. I think he finds it easier to believe that he doesn’t like people, because he knows what he has done, and what he is going to keep doing, and that conflicts with what he wants from people. So, ask him.”

10 hours of prototyping, and Harlan got what seemed like a stable train that floated right above the track, the only issue was that it needed 3 arms to keep it properly centered. Meaning he needed to make it underground, or it needed support rails built above ground.

At first he thought it was a failure, but Dawn kept looking at the toy the lich left him and she thought about his words about not making a shallow copy, he needed to make something that was his.

The single rail designs did function, but for Harlan’s paranoia, he couldn’t accept them.

Between wild magical creatures, human stupidity, and magic, he couldn’t trust anything that didn’t have more than a few points of failure.

His final issue was sizing it up. The sheer cost of making the rails and the train at the size he wanted would bankrupt him past a personal train, the king likely wouldn’t have enough resources to make the system as extensive as Harlan wanted.

He didn’t like the idea, but he would probably need to seek noble supporters.

Greedy, selfish, ignorant, nobles.

People who hated him for what he was, what he did, and what he has refused to do.

It was past dark, the moon was high in the sky already when he walked outside.

The Blackstone party wasn’t that far away, he wanted to take a few days off to cool down, then make a small prototype that he could actually ride, then try to show that off to people.